


Summer Menage IV

by AnniKay



Series: French Lessons [10]
Category: Glee
Genre: BAMF Original Characters, F/F, F/M, M/M, MCU cameos, Multi, Rangeman Cameos, Sex in the City Cameos, Suburgatory Cameos, Threesome - F/F/M, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-22 19:13:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 301,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11386614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnniKay/pseuds/AnniKay
Summary: The summer between Sophomore & Junior Year of College for the Original New Directions/ KAMA's 1st North American Tour





	1. Let’s Go to Vegas (Faith Hill), Work Bitch (Britany Spears) & Aretha, Sing One for Me (Cat Power)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own Nothing…Murphy, Falchuk, and Brennen along with Fox and others own this fandom and all the characters there in…Anything you recognize obviously belongs to them.
> 
> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> AN: This is the next story in the French Lessons Universe. It will be from many different perspectives, and will take care of the summer between Commune’s collegiate sophomore and junior years. Again, it is planned as a series of connected one shots. I hope that you will read, enjoy and review.

Chapter 1  
Let’s Go to Vegas (Faith Hill)  
Sam Point of View

One of the first things I learned the summer before our junior year at Columbia was that spending any time at all in Lima was desperately important to recharging our batteries. We were only there for five days…and we were up and out early on most of those, but we were home. In Lima, we were still pretty much just normal people. Coach Sylvester came up to me at the Hart post-graduation gathering and poked me in the lip. With a wry smirk, she shook her head. “Now that you’re famous…we’re going to be seeing people everywhere trying to copy those massive soup coolers of yours, aren’t we?” she bemoaned. “Disgusting.”

Yup, you can always count on the adults who know you best to keep you from getting a swelled head. Though, I could also count on my Husband and Wife to have my back. “Naw, Coach…silicone isn’t as soft as our Sammy Boy’s lips. They might be imitated…but they cannot be duplicated.” Mercy said with a grin.

Sue looked at us, “I know I don’t really have to tell you that if anything happens to Sugar while she is with you, I will make sure that you are so disfigured that you can never show your faces in public again. I will ensure that you are vilified in the media more than that sandwich schilling asshole who lost weight. Do we understand each other?”

Mercy and I exchanged looks. “We’ll take good care of your girl, Coach.” I told her solemnly.

“You know I love Sugar like she was my play cousin.” Mercy smiled gently. “I’m gonna make sure that she is safe and has a summer that she will never forget…in a completely positive manner.”

Coach Sylvester nodded definitively. “And make sure that you talk up college. She’s getting a gap year, not getting out of it forever.”

I agreed easily. “No problem, next year we really get to sink our teeth into our majors…so we’re looking forward to it.”

She gave me one of those ‘I’m reading your soul’ looks of hers and nodded before she walked away. We didn’t have a lot of time to figure out what that had been about. We had enough time after giving out our gifts to the graduates to spend a little time with Nikki and Beth and our family and friends before we had to get our butts in gear and make it to the Detroit Metropolitan Airport to catch our flight to Las Vegas. When we’d showered after the graduation, we’d also packed and loaded our luggage into the rental SUV. Kurt and Blaine had brought their things to the party and put them in the SUV too. The five of us, Hudson and Junior flew to Vegas from Detroit while Binkie, Delilah and Trina met us at McCarran, having flown out of Newark. Once we were all there, we rented two Buick Enclaves…both very black and very shiny, to take the ten of us and all our clothes and Trina and Dee’s tools and Puck’s, Mercy’s and my own gear for the awards show’s red carpet and after parties to the Four Seasons. I geeked out a little bit over the fact that I was staying in the Four Seasons before we got out of the car. I didn’t realize that the Four Seasons was actually the top four floors of the Mandalay Bay Hotel building.

Hudson was a total goddess. Seriously, even though it was closer to midnight than eleven…check in went smooth as butter. She had gotten us a Valley View Suite and herself, Kurt and Blaine, Dee and Trina and Binkie and Junior four strip view rooms. We were all together on the thirty-ninth floor. Walking into that suite, I was struck again by the fact that I kind of loved having money. I knew it was wrong. The love of money was the root of all evil…but surely preferring to have money rather than not wasn’t actually loving money. We walked into a small foyer with a coat closet off to one side and a half bath to the other. From there, we walked through a room that had a dining table and chairs on the right and a small desk with three chairs a pretty table lamp and the room’s phone. The dining room had a lighted disco ball chandelier above the six-seater table…and a wall mirror above the side board that reflected the light…a lot. We walked through a living room with seating for seven…or thirteen if they were light enough to sit on the end tables. The room was a mix of modern and Art Deco styles that could really only work in Vegas. A lot of gold details. A fucking EPIC view from the windows…that we got to see briefly as Binkie and Junior closed the curtains. 

There was a large kitchen-pantry hybrid room with a full size fridge, awesome coffee set up that contained everything we needed to start our morning right.

The bedroom was really nice…but it didn’t scream LAS VEGAS, like the public rooms of the suite. The whole suite was Vegas classy…but the bedroom was just plain classy. The bed was a king, so it would be a bit cozier that our California Kings in our homes. The bathroom was nice enough, it had a separate shower and tub…which always helped us get ready faster. Binkie and Junior reminded us to call them if we wanted to go anywhere. Then they left us and Hudson alone in the suite. We were only staying for two nights, so we unpacked only our serious clothes. Puck and my suits, dress shirts and Mercy’s black jumpsuit were immediately send down to be pressed. Once that was taken care of, she reminded us that we were due at the Four Seasons Spa at ten, and Dee and Trina would begin hair and makeup at three. With her admonishments made, she left us to our own devices. After refreshing ourselves, we grabbed bottles of water and originally thought to watch TV or something to unwind. There was just one problem with that thought. We were all kind of wired. I mean, we were in the city of sin for the first time since we were all eligible to experience the delights. I smiled at my loves, but it was Mercy who put my thought into words. “Let’s go find a slot machine or a black jack table. I want to try my luck?”

Puck laughed. “We can do that…but first…we need to go over Ruth Howard Mayzer’s Rules for Vegas.”

“Wait…Bubbie has rules for Vegas?” I blurted out.

He nodded. “Technically they are the rules for Vegas, Atlantic City, Macau, Monte Carlo…wherever you can gamble and win big money.”

“Why does Bubbie have rules for the world’s gambling Meccas?”

“Because Bubbie and my grandfather and later Saul…they don’t win small.” His smirk clearly said that he knew he was just like his beloved grandmother and uncle in that regard. “And when you win big…it can piss off the house. So in order to not get banned or buried out in the desert, Bubbie and Zayde…they came up with their Rules for Vegas.”

Mercy’s smile was simply breathtaking. “So what are Bubbie’s Rules for Vegas?”

He turned toward us on the couch. “So rule number one is…you don’t shit where you live. Now that isn’t hard since the Seasons doesn’t have a casino…but I think we should avoid the Mandalay Bay’s casino too. I think we should hit the Palms. It is supposed to be pretty celebrity friendly.”

“We can go there. I’m sure that Binkie or Junior will know where it is. What else?” I asked, wanting to hear all about the rules. 

Puck nodded and continued. “Well, Sexy Mama…you’re going to need to change. Rule number two is…if you’ve got it…flaunt it. Cleavage, legs, D’at ass…charming smiles… they all distract the other players. You fuck up their game play by making them think about you and your sexiness rather than the cards or whatever and you can always come out on top.” It made sense. “Sammy Boy…play up the ‘aw shucks’, southern boy thing. People always underestimate southerners. Thanks to The Nanny, Bubbie’s obvious Jewishness and Queens’s accent make people do the same thing to her. Rule number three is the flip side of that. Don’t let yourself get distracted. Keep your head in the game. Rule number four… if you lose more than five hundred bucks in just a hand or a roll, just chalk it up to not being your day to gamble and go home. And the fifth and final rule…we do not win too much at one place. If you win a quarter of a million in one casino, five hundred thousand if you’re at a high rollers’ table, then it’s time to move on to the next one. Half the bodies under the desert weren’t people who owed the wrong folks money…they were the ones who were too good and won too much.”

“Have I mentioned lately that Bubbie Ruth is one smart lady?” I asked thoughtfully.

Mercy and Noah just agreed with proud grins of their own. I was actually a little surprised that Mercy still wanted to go since that meant she would need to change. But she did. And she didn’t just change. She went into the bedroom and came out twenty minutes later looking like a walking, talking wet dream. She was wearing the black Alexander McQueen pencil skirt she’d worn to one of the days of Finn and Lauren’s civil trial. But she had paired it with a black, green, blush and white striped rib knit top that had a cross over halter top deal that made her boobs look both HUGE and like they were trying to win their way free with every breath she took. Her favorite, ridiculously high, red bottom platform T-strap, peep-toe Louboutins adorned her feet and pushed her up to, like, five nine. It was hard to take my eyes off her curves, but her lips. Fuck…her lipstick was shiny and wet and a chocolatey pink color that made me think of her mouth right after she finished blowing one of us. She had done something with her hair that made it look even shinier than it had when she went in there. She had diamonds sparkling at her ears that reflected the shine in her eyes and smile.

Noah and I breathed out a heated sigh at the same moment. “No man…no body is gonna be able to pay a damn bit of attention to their cards.” He was able to say. I could only nod.

Fine as he and I both knew ourselves to be, we went in the bedroom and changed our shirts. We still couldn’t keep up with our sexy wife, but in smedium pullovers we could, at least, look somewhat worthy. I remembered to call down to Binkie and Junior, but we agreed to let Hudson stay in her room. That many strangers, in a loud, probably raucous environment would be hell on her. Even though she would do it without a complaint, we knew that we didn’t want to do that to her. Binkie ended up being the one to go with us. Since it was just him, we agreed quickly that if we split up, he was to stay with Mercy. The Palms was…loud and lively. It was exactly what was thought of when one thought of Las Vegas. Mercy wanted to play a slot machine first…then she was golden with moving to the table games. She played a one pull Wheel of Fortune slot machine and lost the dollar. Then she played a dollar on the Michael Jackson Icon slot machine and won five hundred bucks. She jumped up and down like she’d won a million. Suffice it to say that me and Puck were mesmerized watching her in her joy. Mercy said it felt like a blessing from one of the legends she most regretted she would never get a chance to meet.

We left the slots and we made our way from the game of chance to the games of skill. The Palms had tables for everything from baccarat to craps to roulette. They also had like all the poker; three card, Texas Hold’em, Pai Gow…all of them. We each got one thousand dollars in chips and said that when we lost those, we were done. Puck took his chips and kissed us both for luck as he headed to a Texas Hold’em table. Mercy and I floated around for a while. Winning a little here and there. Losing a little here and there. I found out I was not a craps player. That table almost broke me. But then I discovered that me and roulette got along just fine. I doubled my original money there before I decided to get while the getting was good. I was feeling pretty damn good. Then Mercy found the ‘vingt-et-un’, tables, or blackjack for us plebs. She was amazing. It was so fucking hot. Seriously she went from fifteen hundred bucks, after her blessing from the King of Pop, to almost eight grand in what felt like minutes. I’m sure it was longer than that…but it didn’t feel like a long time at all. I do think that the dealer was spending more time checking out her breasts than paying real attention to the house’s hand, and that helped, but she was still really good.

When she decided that she was done with black jack, she and I got one of the Palms baccarat dealers to teach us the game. Noah still hadn’t reappeared. After our lessons in baccarat, and winning enough to not feel like a loser at it, Mercy, Binkie and I decided to go and find Puck. I didn’t know exactly what all those chips in front of him meant. But I could tell when we found him that he was at least a hundred grand up from where he started. He was seated at a poker table with Shannon Elizabeth, the guy from ‘Breaking Bad’-the one that wasn’t Hal from Malcolm in the Middle- and a few other high rollers none of us recognized. When they finished the hand…Noah quit the table…realizing that it was like three and we had to be fully functional during the afternoon and evening. After shaking hands with the other players, Noah came over too us with his usual cocky swagger. Mercy looked at him in wonder. “How much did you finally win?”

Noah threw an arm around her shoulder. “I just took a hand for twenty seven thousand, three hundred and eighteen bucks. That was the biggest of the night though.”

I chuckled. “Damn, I thought you need a serious ‘resting bitch face’ poker face to win at poker.”

My husband shook his head. “No, you just need to not have any tells. If I run the whole game laughing and joking…but never give away a good or bad hand…they can’t try and read me. Now don’t get me wrong, for some people the RBF works…in some games it’s the only thing that does work, but the table wasn’t that kind of table.”

Binkie smiled…or what passed for a smile for Binkie. “Ranger got banned from the Mandalay Bay right before he started Rangeman. He won too much. He is completely inscrutable.”

We all looked at him in shock. None of us had heard Binkie say that many words at any one time. Not even when he’d been teaching me to ride my motorcycle. “Cool.” Mercy and I agreed.

“Bubbie’s Rule Number Five…never win too much at any one casino.” Puck said wisely.

“Good rule.” Binkie agreed. “But you never did answer Ms. Mercy’s question.”

Mercy smirked. “Binkie, I think I’m gonna have to elevate you to play cousin status.”

Noah laughed. Nothing got you on Mercy’s good side faster than helping her assuage her curiosity. “Fine. I started on a different table. The buy in for that one was ten grand. I didn’t want to get any more chips on us, so I played a regular table until I had what I needed. Then I moved over to that table. I’ve been playing the high roller table for the last two hours. I only won a little over a hundred and sixty-grand total. If I had more time, I’m pretty sure that I’d have hit the limit.”

“Damn. Now I don’t just love you…I want to be like you when I grow up.” I muttered. “In two and a half hours, you turned one grand into a hundred and sixty?”

“Bubbie has done better…so has Saul. Its why they only gamble when they need something.” He pointed out as we made our way to the cash out window. We all took our payouts in checks, even though I probably could have done cash without too much problem. On the walk back to our hotel and up to our rooms, we put the smaller checks into our individual Bank of America accounts, and we googled to find where there was a Barclays…we’d been well trained. Big money went automatically into our Barclays account for Saul to play with and turn into even bigger money. But it would have to wait until Hudson could run it over the next day…we were not driving to Hendersonville at three in the morning. Instead we said good night to Binkie after he did another room walk-through and made love until sleep forced itself upon us.

I was proud how functional we were on like four hours of sleep. We managed to get up, showered, dressed and down to the spa on the lobby level on time. Granted, we’d sorely abused the coffee station in our kitchen pantry…but we were there. There may or may not have been naps taken during our customized, aromatherapy, deep tissue massages. There may or not have been a nap during our pedicures and Mercy’s manicure. There were definitely naps during the pure results facials, desert detox wraps. All in all, when the time came to get ready for the night, we were a lot better rested than one would have expected. Hudson, Trina and Dee had finished their Express Facials, Express Massages and Decadence & Delight Manicure-Pedicures before us, so they’d headed upstairs and got our dining room turned into a beauty salon. By the time we were done and released, having tipped the hell out of our treatment providers, Kurt and Blaine were up in our room and everything was in readiness for us to go up and get dressed.

It took us three hours to get all dolled up. Mercy looked amazing. She’d been feeling extra sexy, so she had put on a steel boned, under bust, strapless satin, corset and a black lace cup strapless bra under her black, strapless jumpsuit. That meant that when she put the Alexander McQueen embroidered lily pad chain-maille tunic on over it, her gorgeous titties moved a lot more than they would have if she went with her shaper slip over a fuller coverage strapless bra. Inspired by the chain-maille tunic, Dee’d turned Mercy’s long weave into a ladder braid that looked like it would have been very at home on a queen in a renaissance fair. She even wove a metallic silver ribbon through the length of the braid before she wrapped it up to make a floral looking bun. It reminded me of how Lauren had worn her hair to our senior prom. Lily etched silver hair pins were pushed in to embellish and hold all that hair into place. If Dee went historic with Mercy’s hair…Trina went totally modern with her makeup. Those super expensive, individual, mink eyelashes took forever. Then her eyes were made up with black, silver and platinum with strong black lines and shiny sparkles. Her lips though, oh, my, fucking, Lord. They were lined darker and kept more berry-neutral in the center. But they were also so glossy that they looked even bigger and softer than usual.

Mercy had put on her lingerie and a robe before getting her hair and makeup done, so when they were done with her, Kurt and Blaine helped her to get dressed without messing up her look. Noah and I had had our faces both done while Mercy was getting her hair done. Then Dee made my hair look shiny and bouncy and formal. Puck just had to get his brushed a little. He was at that point where he needed to make a decision on whether he was going to grow it out or if he was keeping it buzzed. So, he kind of rocking a Caesar cut by that point. Dee just made his hair lay flat and wavy smooth. We’d done much like Mercy, so we were sitting there in our ‘no lines guaranteed’ drawers and robes. But it took less time for Noah to throw on his black, Tom Ford Windsor Base Birdseye two-piece suit, snow white Zenga dress shirt, black silk tie, Tom Ford Gianni patent leather lace-up shoes, than it did for Mercedes Jones to get into her jumpsuit and tunic. Noah looked sexy as hell. It took me a minute to realize that he looked like a high-end Man in Black. I was rocking a simple Ralph Lauren Fresco wool two-piece suit in matte gray, and black Prada Runway hybrid wing-tip oxford sneakers. Puck and I had flipped a coin to see which of us got to go without a tie. I was really glad I’d won. Fully dressed, Noah and I watched as Mercy’s imported, silver filigree, Arabel Lebrusan earrings and bracelets were put in her ears and on her arms and her strappy Gianvito Rossi sandals were fastened on her pretty little feet.

Binkie and Junior were ready in their black suits. Kurt and Hudson were going with us. they were both wearing charcoal. A zooted up Alexander McQueen suit for Kurt and a pretty little classic, Amanda Grey business dress for Hudson. Between the two of their black bags, messenger for Kurt and a tote for Hudson, they had everything we needed for the evening including our tickets, wallets, phones and touch up items. We went down to a special entrance where there was a limo waiting to take us to the MGM Grand Garden Arena red carpet. We arrived a little early so our driver had to wait on Mariah Carey’s limo and Lady Antebellum’s to get there and line up before we could slide into our place. It was a fun red carpet as far as they went. There were more than a few interviewers that we knew…so we got some decent questions. And we were right behind Hillary Scott, Dave Haywood, Charles Kelly and their spouses on the carpet. The three of us and Lady A took some great pictures together. Hudson got them to Darcy and their PA got them to their Social Media Manager so we linked up online and hit Instagram hard.

I think, as much as I loved performing…at any given time…I liked the award shows where we were simply presenting a lot better. We’d not been able to get there early enough the day before to do rehearsals, but Haja had managed to convince the producers that we could handle the television time anyway. However, part of the arrangement was that we would rehearse back stage for the entire time between our arrival and the time the telecast started. Thankfully, the producer had the script divided mainly between Noah and Mercy with me chiming in with a punchline and us stating the top radio song award together. We made our way to our seats and were filmed there when the show opened. It was a good thing too. We were up for the first award of the night, the Top Duo or Group award. And we won it. Thankfully by the time we finished with the photos and everything, it was time for us to go and give the Top Radio Song statue to John Legend.

Over the course of the night we were up for nine other awards. Top Streaming Song for ColorBlind which we won, the Top Hot 100 Song for Rescue Me which we also won and Top Streaming Artist, another win. The we lost the Top Billboard 200 Artist and the Top Digital Songs Artist. But the winning started again. We got the Top Hot 100 Artist statue, the Top Billboard 200 Album award, the Top Social Artist; we thanked the hell out of Darcy Lewis for that one; and the Billboard Chart Achievement Award. It was a great night. The performances were epic. Jamal, Delphine and Hakeem did a ridiculously good performance of ‘Conqueror’ that then morphed into ‘You’re So Beautiful’. It was great. Cookie looked amazing in a long black dress with cut-outs showing off that mother of three, seventeen years in lock up or not…she had a bangin’ body. Ed Sheeran had my second favorite performance of the night. I wasn’t that big a fan of the Brittany Spears and Iggy Azalea performance but the audience seemed like they loved it and that was the important thing.

After the last performance of the evening, we did the circuit of press and photogs, congratulated our fellow WMG winners and Mal and the Empire winners then retired to our hotel room. We made out until Hudson reminded us that we had to at least make an appearance at the after party. So, we had a quick shower and got changed. Unfortunately, that meant Trina and Dee had some work to do. But the flip side was that Mercy was out of her corset…which had started hurting her by the end of the show. She did put on a shaper slip, the shortest one she owned pulled up just under her halter top bra, but it was more bendy so it was a relief after the steel boning. When she was dressed, she looked almost as good as she’d looked stepping out of the shower. Her hair was down and wavy, her makeup was a night time look, but similar to the one she’d had on earlier. She was wearing a black silk, Ramy Brook Harriet halter top, Alexander McQueen patchwork ruffled leather miniskirt and red Giuseppe Zanotti suede diamond-cut cage sandals, with chunky silver and crystal jewelry by Anna Bellagio, Kendra Scott & Thomas Laine Ben-Amun finished off her ‘after party ensemble’. Kurt found that our beautiful wife had already made the Cambio best dressed list as well as a few others for her slightly Avant-Gard red-carpet look. I just threw on a basic black look; v-neck, long sleeved black pullover and black slacks with the same shoes I’d worn the awards show. They were hella-comfortable. Puck was even more casual black jeans, a black, white and red plaid shirt with a tee shirt on under it and his black work boots. Noah was hoping that we’d be able to hit The Venetian before we called it a night.

The party was alright. Taylor Swift was hosting it in the Nobu Villa at the Nobu Hotel in Caesars Palace. She was a little salty about the fact that we’d beaten her out for quite a few titles that night. Including most awards won, even though she’d been nominated more times than us. She played it off like she was joking, but my momma hadn’t raised no fools. I knew a true joke from a bitter bite. Her boyfriend, Calvin, was cool though. Cassidy had a fan in him. Tay-Tay did through a pretty good bash. There was a photo wall that was a ton of fun. There were more than enough people we liked there to make the hour we spent there pleasant. I mean, Jennifer Lopez was always really cool to us. Plus Jamal and Cookie were there. Keem was there too, but, thankfully, he was busy scamming on one of the Fifth Harmony chicks so he couldn’t get on Mercy’s nerves too bad. We dipped out and, while it was close enough to walk it…even for Mercy and her heels, we took the limo. Binkie and Junior were rather adamant that we should.

The Venetian was…just wow. The casino offered us the choice of hundreds of table games in separate gaming areas. We could pick from blackjack, baccarat, roulette, craps, Pai Gow poker, Pai Gow tiles and various other games I couldn’t even name. On top of all of those games, there were more than twelve hundred slot machines for people to choose from. We each picked one slot just for fun. We all came up with nothing from that. As soon as we entered the poker room…yup the Venetian had a special, world famous poker room. And as soon as we stepped foot inside, one of the room’s concierges came over and invited Puck to sit in on a high roller game that was starting in a special suite off the main poker room. I didn’t even wonder how they knew to ask him. I watched CSI…I knew that in Vegas there were always cameras everywhere and the Houses knew all. Given the money that would be at play in that room, we left Binkie with Noah and Mercy and I headed back to the other table games. Me and Roulette became besties for a night and Mercedes found out that she was pretty damn good at craps.

We didn’t have to be back to our rooms at any particular time. Our flight wasn’t even until noon…so as long as we made it to the room by nine to shower, change and pack in time to make it to the airport by ten thirty-eleven, we were golden. To be honest, the Venetian reminded me of the casino from the Percy Jackson books…it was easy to lose track of time. They brought us food and drinks. We didn’t even come up for air until Noah reached the Rule Number Five limit and was ready to go. That night, we’d all managed to do well. I walked away with enough to have brought a nice pickup if I needed one. Mercedes’ haul was even better. We did have to pay out tabs, of course, but even then, we left there that night almost three hundred and fifteen grand up. Even Binkie and Junior had won them some loot, mainly by taking advantage of the House Side Bets system. We were riding high…it was probably why we let Noah talk us into one stop at the MGM Grand. That place was not as lucky as we’d have thought after the Billboard Music Awards…I lost my thousand dollars and was in the hole another two hundred when I quit. Mercy went all the way down to the lose limit…lost her thousand and owed the house a full five hundred…when she tapped out. Noah even had a crappy time there. He only won like six grand in the time he played. We ended up making it an early night after all…well, earlier than the one before.

We made love and got some quality sleep. The flight the next day was fine…feeling longer than it was because of the time difference. Bubbie and Lil Darlin’ met us at the airport so that was good. Nikki had a million stories about the rest of her time in Lima and how weird her classmates were acting after seeing us on TV the night before. As much fun as we’d had in Las Vegas, we were glad to be home.

Work Bitch (Brittany Spears)  
Mercedes PoV

We had a day…well, not off, but we weren’t traveling or due anywhere before ten or doing anything strenuous before breakfast the Tuesday after the BBMAs. In fact, we slept until nine, had breakfast and still made it to Forest Hills Stadium in Queens by ten for the first of our all hands-on deck, full crew, tour practices. I did have to admit, given the short scope of time before our tour’s opening night, the practices were really grueling. Everyone was there and warmed up by ten-thirty. Our first two hours were spent divided into band, vocalists, and dancers each group ran through our entire fifty song set list. Then we came together and worked on the first third of the list. The way the tour would run, we’d do twelve to fourteen songs, then there would be a thirty minute DJ Ca$$ interlude…giving us time to change for the second part of our set. Which would again be followed Cassidy’s amazing spinning and again we’d change for the final twelve to fourteen songs. The Encore would run anywhere from seven to ten songs…depending on the audience’s demands. Most of these people would be paying more than fifty bucks a ticket…we wanted to make sure they felt they’d gotten their money’s worth. All told, including Cassidy’s hour and the forty-five minutes of our opening acts…our audiences would be treated to almost five hours of entertainment. It wasn’t really what was done. Most of the time concert goers would count themselves lucky if they got two hours from the headliners.

We were planning on another difference, keeping our set lists somewhat fluid. Varying the order we performed the songs in, so that if there were people following the tour, or attending two or more shows in the same region, they’d have, at least, a somewhat fresh experience each time they attended. It would mean that every morning we’d have to decide on the night’s set list and send the changes to the wardrobe matrons and the lighting and sound guys. But fortunately, we were not lip syncing, so that wouldn’t be as much of a bother as if we were. But the costume changes might be effected somewhat. Mainly, if we chose to move the Tamir Rice and Emmitt Till songs…we very quickly donned white choir robes for those songs. So, the matrons needed to have them ready. They needed to know when to have them prepared.

But even more that the fluidity of the set lists, our shows were going to be very, very dynamic. Our twelve background dancers would showcase modern and contemporary, ballet, hip-hop, jazz and even some Ballroom dance moves. Mike and Sugar had both gotten to the city on Monday morning and had an intensive day of practice with Rainbow and the permanent and the other temporary dancers. They were still working on things like the quick changes between numbers and smoothing their transitions…but Rainbow was glowing about how well they knew the numbers and how great their movement was. They gave her all the credit thought. She had made sure that they had videos of every dance she had coordinated and every change or addition that had been made.

Tina’s Monday was much the same as Mike’s. After getting to the city and dropping her things by the brownstone, she had reported to our practice studio in Brooklyn. But where Mike had been working with his fellow dancers, she had been working with the band and the background singers. Arjun may have had more technical training, but Tina had been singing with me, both in class and out, for years. It was she and Santana that really helped him become comfortable with the idea of following where I led rather than sticking to the sheet music religiously. I wasn’t sure how they had finally convinced him, but when I let the music take me where it would, he followed perfectly. It was such a relief. I’d been worried that we’d chosen the wrong person, and there wasn’t really time left to get anyone else. I told my friends that I so owed them one. Santana, of course, demanded a pair of my Louboutins…which wasn’t a problem, we had the same sized shoes, but differing tastes. The ones she wanted weren’t my favorites. Tina stockpiled her favor…she wasn’t sure what she wanted, and didn’t feel I owed her anything anyway.

I shook off those thoughts as we finished our second thirty-minute break of the day. we were running the practice much as the show would go. Fifty-five minutes to an hour of singing and dancing followed by thirty minutes of rehydration…and warmups to keep our muscles loose, then it was back to another hour of practice. The practice ran all day, with an hour for lunch at three. We kept things fairly light, four ounces of lean protein, salmon, chicken breast or steak, alongside a big salad rife with Swiss chard, kale, spinach, rainbow carrot slivers, avocado and almond slices with a simple lemon-ginger vinaigrette gave us all a lot of healthy proteins and fats and enough nutrients to keep us going through an afternoon of vigorous dancing and singing. We did stick to vocal practice and yoga type exercises for the first hour after lunch, just to make sure we had time to allow our bodies to handle, not reject, our meal. After our hydration break, we did a full hour of dance and movement practice. Our day ended at half past six and we were completely exhausted.

Bautista was a goddess among housekeepers. She had held our dinner for us that evening. Which was even more impressive since our house was filled to capacity that week. Adams and Karofsky had gotten in the afternoon before and Adams had turned the big sectional and ottoman in the family room into his bed while Karofsky was utilizing the ones in Bartana’s family room the same way. Tike had one of the guest rooms in that side of the duplex, and when Tessa, Joe and Unique arrived that evening, Joe and Tessa took the extra guest room. We’d gotten a really, really good air mattress and set that up for Unique in Britts studio. It was a purchase that was pretty long overdue. We probably should have thought of that after our guestroom became Nikki’s bedroom. But que sera sera…we had the highly recommended SoundAsleep Dream Series air mattress now and if we got one more, we’d be straight no matter how many of our friends came to visit. In fact, we probably should get two more just in case. Az and Dave had been just as tired as we all were. The Roadies had had their own practice that day. the two football players had spent the day using the stadium’s equipment and our own sets to get used to putting up and taking down stages and sets until Lamar was happy with their timing and efficiency and the safety of the structures. We asked them if they were sure they wanted to continue…it was exhausting work after all. But they immediately shot down any thought of them going back to Lima. “This is better conditioning than what we’d usually be doing over the summer.” Karofsky assured me.

“Plus, I’m making four times what I could make over the summer in Lima.” Az pointed out. “I can finally put money in Lil Bird’s college fund instead of my parents just doing so.” With that as his motivation, I knew that he would keep the job even if he had to crawl over three miles of cut glass every day. Azimo Adams might never be a great human being…but he was a damn good father.

Over a wonderful dinner of creamy parmesan-garlic-mushroom quinoa, roasted Brussel sprouts and grilled lamb loin chops, we all talked through our day and the time since we’d last been together. We learned that Joe had picked a midnight blue Patriot. We found out that Tessa had promised that her godmother would get invited to KAMA’s future parties and such. “Fine, but we’ll have to make sure that there is someone there to keep her and Santana far away from each other. I don’t want it to be said that a chance meeting at a KAMA party caused the end of life as we know it.” Sam told her with a grim smile. He was only half joking. We’d talked about how alike the two superficially different women seemed. Sam had almost convinced Noah and I that if the two of them touched, it would cause irreparable damage to the space time continuum. We’d easily convinced him that even if it didn’t the two of them could easily overthrow governments and destroy the world the old-fashioned way.

Tessa also told us that she and Joe had gotten an email from Erin Owen, the interior designer who had handled the design aspects of the house the would inhabit for the next four or so years. Things would be ready for them to move in by the endo of June, or early July. Erin had just wanted to touch bases with them and get information about their personal preferences and tastes to make the house more ‘them’. I made a mental note to remind George to change the locks when they got there in September. Not that he would forget…but just in case. Tessa was also considering trading her Focus in for an Escape or a late model used Toyota Forerunner. “I’m just…well, since Grandad said that you guys probably got Joe the Patriot because of driving in the snow, I just thought maybe I should look into a vehicle that was heavier and had four-wheel drive. It wouldn’t be fair to Joe if he had to drive me everywhere for like five months every school year.” Noah, Sam and I exchanged a speaking look. “No, don’t you even think about it. You’ve spent enough on me for the next year. I will not accept a single thing from any of or all of you until my next birthday. The parents gave me the title to the Focus so that I could trade it in if I wanted something different for all the cross-country trips I’ll be making. I’m going to have enough money to live off very well with the scholarships I got and my college fund handling tuition and no room fees…that’s not even including what I’m making this summer. Please, let me do this on my own.” She almost pleaded.

“I guess we can understand wanting to stand on your own two feet. Just please, talk with Saul about getting preapproved for a loan through Barclays when you find out how much your trade in is worth.” Noah advised. “You’ll get a better rate than trying to go through any of the financiers the car dealership will try and put you through. And only do a used car if it still has warranty time, like a year or more, on it.” She did acquiesce to that demand, mainly because she could see the sense in doing so and they would benefit her.

After we finished dinner, most of the grown folks tipped in to help with cleanup as a way of thanking Viola for the great meal, while Tessa and I helped Nikolette with her homework. Her school year was almost over so there wasn’t much. It was just nice to have that time with our little angel before bedtime. Nikki was spending every night in her bedroom at our house until Sunday night. I read her the next chapter of Goblet of Fire, though she could read it to herself, it was a ritual that I would definitely miss. In fact, I would miss everything about our little girl. Though, in all fairness, Bubbie and Nikki would be joining us on the road fairly often…sometimes accompanied by Beth, sometime by Sarah or Stacey or Stevie. Ruth had quite a bit of vacation time she could access from her primary job, and joining us on the road was probably a part of her second career. She was planning on using that time to bond with her great-grands and her middle school aged grands. Part of that planning would be taking them to see the sights our great country had to offer and to let them see their big siblings on stage a few times. Once Nikki was showered and in bed, we all took turns abusing our hot water systems and retired ourselves.

Wednesday was very similar to Tuesday for most of us. Unique and Kurt were up early. He was escorting our friend, and spiritual love child to the stores where Bubbie and he spent the entire morning to getting her kitted out as befitting a Diva of her station. Shortly after they left, Darcy swung by and snatched up Tessa and Joe. She took them to the KAMA offices where they spent the morning training for their summer jobs. Darcy introduced them to their ‘Swag Van’, a twenty-fifteen Nissan Transit thirty-five hundred with extended roof storage. She led them through the process of loading and unloading all the various sized Rubbermaid containers that housed all the swag we’d managed to autograph in the previous several months. Everything was organized in a system that was almost intuitive it was so easy to understand. She also showed them how to use the handheld barcode scanner to do their inventory before and after every show. “It has wi-fi and will send the information back to me here at HQ. If you start getting really low on something that we didn’t anticipate selling all that well, I’ll be able to get you more of them to get the bosses’ John Hancocks on.”

“That makes sense. It also makes keeping track of sales a lot easier.” Tessa agreed.

Joe had a different perspective on things. “Can you email us a copy of your nightly inventory so we can compare it to our nightly tallies of what all we sold? It will help us on the other side of inventory control. I mean, I don’t like to think that anyone would steal, but we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

“That’s actually a really good idea, Hart. Not to mention that it shows you’re a realist in your religiosity. My grandparents had a neighbor…that lady was so religious she was actual-factual scary, but every Halloween she’d put out a big thing of candy with a note telling people to just take two pieces. That bowl was empty in minutes…then her house would get tped by kids mad they hadn’t gotten anything.”

Joe looked confused for a moment. “I’m not sure how a religious lady can be scary, but I appreciate the compliment and understand the overarching sentiment.”

They laughed and got back to work. Joe and Tessa learned all about the certificates of authentication that went with each autographed item. With the certificate, every bit of swag they sold was actually resalable as a collectible item. Once she had them well versed on the card readers, the tiered cash boxes and the receipt system they would be using, she gave them the Chase deposit only bank cards with KAMA and their names on them that they would be using to make their nightly deposits. “Chase has over eighteen and a half thousand ATMs around the world. You should be able to find one anywhere.” Darcy assured them. Once Darcy was sure that they could handle everything they would need to handle to be able to do their jobs, and she’d showed them the pepper spray canisters, the two mag lights, the rechargeable flashlight stun-guns and the clever keychain that doubled as an eye gouger that she had hidden throughout the vehicle for their safety, she turned them over to Hudson.

Hudson took the two recent graduates into her office and gave them their per diem cards. “Your per diem is sixty-five dollars per day. With that, you are, technically, expected to handle three meals every day. I say technically because for the most part, our hotel stays include breakfast as part of your room package. In addition to that, we are loading the buses with cereals, breakfast bars, pop tarts, milk and Silk, and snacks. Plus, there is no telling when Cedes, Noah and Sam will decide to treat everyone for dinner. Additionally, on show nights, you all will eat with the roadies, and part of our contracts with all of the promoters is that they will provide dinner for the crew. Probably you will really only use it for lunch. Now in addition to the per diems, which will be added for the entire week every Sunday, there will also be a weekly necessities stipend of twenty-five dollars added every week.”

Joe raised a hand to ask a question going through both is and Tessa minds. “Weekly necessities stipend, what is that?”

Hudson smiled indulgently. She actually found Joe to be one of the most soothing persons to be around that she had ever encountered. She’d told us that he had a way of making her feel at ease in his presence…even from the very first time she’d met him. Usually, it took her a while to warm up to new people. “Well, there are necessities that every person will bring with them that we just can’t buy in bulk…things where personal preferences really matter. Things like toothpaste, toothbrushes…feminine products, for example. Commune wanted to put in on keeping everyone stocked on their necessities since they wouldn’t be home.”

“That’s cool.” Tessa acknowledged. It made sense to her that there could be things that people would want what they were used to…like Tessa needed Colgate Total with whitening mint gel…she hated actual paste toothpaste. “So, what kinds of things are the sibs keeping bulk stocked?”

“Well, Dove soap, unscented Lubriderm lotion, laundry materials and sunscreen. Oh, and like I said, breakfast items and snacks.” Hudson told them. “Of course, if someone wanted to use things other than what is provided they can always get their own. As long as they remember to consider things like space restraints. Now then, the two of you will be bunking in the bus that is designed to suit Artie’s special needs. He, Santana and Brittany have the bedroom while you two, Michael and Tina have four of the bunks. The others will be available to Darcy and Lester when they join us on the road. When we stay in hotels you two can either have a room alone together or you can share with Sugar and Justin respectively. Please let me know your preference as soon as you’ve reached your decision.”

They went over the rest of the particulars then they were delivered to Ethan and Daniel who took them to lunch and then caught them up to speed on the stalker situation and asked them if they would be willing to provide extra eyes and ears on the tour. Both teens immediately agreed, though Tessa had a question for her kind of, sort of uncle and cousin. “So, what’s security going to be like, then?” She trusted Rangeman…but even she knew that it could be well outside their comfort zone. The revered security company could simply be unable to handle the very different job.

“It will still be Rangeman providing the security. Ranger has definitely taken the contract with KAMA and used it to expand both his Trenton and New York offices and their offerings. He said that even if providing tour security lost the firm a little bit in man hours and transportation costs, they were projected to make it back ten times over within the first few years the Heartland offices were opened.” Daniel told her with a smirk.

Ethan continued to explain, “there will be four partner teams on the tour with you guys at all times. Manny and his partner will join you when Ruth and Nikolette come out. Lester Santos will be popping in and out as well.”

“Oh, good…that’s good.” Tessa acknowledged. “We’ll make sure that we keep our eyes and ears peeled.”

“Yeah, and we’ll make sure that Tina, Mike, Adams and Dave all do the same.” Joe’s voice was strong and determined. Even if all his faith and beliefs were proved wrong and he and Tessa turned out not to be forever, which he didn’t think was even close to possible, Mercedes Jones would still be family in his heart. He would protect her like family. He said as much to Ethan and Daniel.

“Good, good. but we want you guys to protect yourselves out there too. You’re getting a great opportunity to learn and see and experience a lot this summer. Take full advantage of it…but stay true to your selves and take care of each other.” Ethan said wisely. “Oh, and just a word of advice from a father…text or call your parents every day. they are going to feel as if they are caught in a weird catch twenty-two. On the one hand, they can’t call to check on you without you thinking that they don’t trust in your maturity and ability to take care of yourselves. But on the other hand, they are your parent and they worry that maybe you can’t take care of everything that comes at you given that this summer will be your first experiences with truly taking care of your selves. So just do them the favor of letting them know that you are okay…often, okay?”

The two teens chuckled, but agreed easily. They had already planned to do it. But having a look into how parents thought was definitely not a bad thing. We all chuckled as Tessa and Joe told us all about their day over dinner. The only person more excited to share the events of the day that day had been Unique. “Lord, chile…I never knew just how amazing the shopping in this city is. I mean, I thought I knew before, but today was a whole nother experience. It was the best seven hours of my whole life. I mean, oh my damn. I spent three hours in Saks, and another three in Bergdorf Goodman.”

She told us the whole experience, “The personal shopper office at Bergdorf’s is on the fifth floor, just behind the evening dress collections. The thirteen thousand dollar champagne-colored Carolina Herrera sequined illusion tulle and the sleeveless ruffled ivory Swiss-dotted ball gowns that cost nine grand a pop that I passed on my way in help put me in a make-believe, Cinderella-at-the-ball mood. My stylist led us into a nicely lit suite of rooms. It was full of mirrors and outfitted with velvet chairs, the walk-in closet of our collective dreams. The three of us made ourselves at home. Her name was Merilyn and she warned us that new-client appointments can last up to three hours but have been known to extend for three days.

The first hour was just trying on different styles and cuts to see what fit and looked best. Then we got into style. Merilyn favored feathers, metallics and lacy fabrics mixed with leather. Even this diva in training was a little bit intimidated by the direction she wanted me to go. Thankfully Mrs. Ruth and Papa Kurt were there. They made sure that I expressed my style and my desires. I picked up a black Elie Tahari skirt. It was a miniskirt and a midiskirt; it was lace and also not lace. The mini was set inside the midi; the outer layer was lace, the inner one not. Then, she brought me the perfect dress, deep forest green. Fit and flare, wearable in all four seasons, could be dressed up or down. Merilyn tossed a leopard-spotted scarf over my neck; it landed in a perfect, chic configuration. It was almost as if she totally knew the way to this Diva’s heart. Then she had me try on a silver and black velvet minidress with geometric rings. Conservatively tailored, but definitely fun. She strapped an oxblood-colored Gucci bag over my shoulder. The good Lord knew it was love at first sight. Next, came a black blouse with golden fruit blossoming on the front, I was not down for that but the floral print leather skirt with lace panels; a reversible shearling coat, blue leather with black collar…those all just screamed Unique. I felt like I was the very definition of smarter, more chic, more fun.

“A few great pieces and you’re all set, a new look,” Merilyn said. Then I found out how much just those ten pieces cost. I balked a little bit…Could I really spend six grand for what she said was a transformation? Crazy. But it was for a whole new me? I looked so mature and feminine and put-together in a way I just didn’t realize was missing from my life. So, I handed over the Bergdorf card you gave me for graduation. I was prepping myself to spend a grand or more of my graduation money to make up the difference, right. Five thousand plus the plane trip and a place to stay…that was an amazing graduation gift in my eyes. Then she comes back and asks me if I would like to look on my own to use the other four thousand. I ‘bout fainted. But I have got to say, honestly I kind of feel like God had put it into your hearts to give me that much because it totally made up for the laser hair removal down there. That isht hurt like a bad mother-father. Thank God I wasn’t a hairy bear to begin with. So then Ruth takes over. She led us through the store and soon I had jeans and leggings, everyday tops, other tops that I could wear with the things Merilyn had found for me. I was totally amazed how much we could get, even in Bergdorf Goodman for the rest of what was on the card.”

“Oh darling, no one wears all super expensive pieces all the time. You mix and match Bergdorf with Old Navy, TJMaxx with Saks. We used their stylists to find what looked best on you and then went from there. That’s why Kurt gave you the Old Navy, Targét, Marshalls and TJ Maxx gift cards. So that you can augment your wardrobe as the year goes by.” Ruth pointed out. “Now, tell them what happened in Saks.”

Unique full on blushed. “Well, um…the stylist’s name there was Julio. Momma-Cedes, he was almost as good as Papa Kurt. He talked to me about my likes and dislikes. Hell, he even talked me into singing him a little something, so I gave him ‘I Know Where I’ve Been’ because that song has been speaking to me this week like fire. Anyway, he talked me into trying on a pair of Jimmy Choo boots that cost like five months of my rent for next year. But they were so gorgeous. So yeah, we were looking at a pair of Marques’ Almeida floral capri trousers, so much cuter than the name implies by the way, when Julio’s boyfriend shows up. Apparently, Remi Doelp from Sony A&R is his boyfriend. He gave me his information and wants me to contact him when I’m a year post op…so that I can actually try and do something other than take care of my after care and do my homework…” she joked.

There was not a moment of silence for the next thirty minutes. We were all celebrating with her as if she was signing a contract that very day. I think that most of us who had taken the time to look into the problems she would still be facing once she transitioned…we knew that the biggest hurdle would be finding her next goal. Not knowing what to do with their lives next, seemed to be a major depression trigger for a lot of trans-people. I felt pretty secure that even more than getting through college, getting her own deal would fill that bill well. We talked about how she wanted to handle things, we gave her our full permission to talk to Haja and our Team to use their services when she got ready to start the path of her career. Even if we weren’t at the same label, Unique was our people. She had been since the night Kurt and I beseeched Puck for ideas to torment Rachel for making her life at Carmel hell.

The next morning, we all got up to have breakfast together before taking Nikki to school and Unique to the airport. She had to get checked in to Wexner Medical Center that Sunday so she was going home to get her shit together. She would be there for a while. All of our parents, the Lynns and the Harts were planning on taking turns visiting ‘Nique and her mom and aunt and uncle. After we left LaGuardia, we headed back to Forest Hills and practices kicked our asses yet again. But we were not there near as long. We cut the day short at four to make sure that they were all packed. Okay, so mainly it was to give us a chance to pack. Since wardrobe for the concerts was taken care of, Noah, Sam and I just had to pack for ourselves. I personally packed thirty sets of underwear, fifteen that qualified as lingerie and fifteen cotton sets for athletic activity and dancing. I packed three pairs of yoga pants, three pairs of athletic shorts and graphic tee-shirts to wear with them for practices. Nine pairs of thicker terry-cloth socks, two pairs of practice sneaks and a pair of running shoes finished my practice gear. Then I turned my attention to more Diva like clothes. I picked six nice outfits that I could mix and match without people realizing that I only had those twelve pieces with me. Then I added my Etro orange kimono top. I hadn’t worn it anywhere and it was such a great look, I couldn’t leave it behind. I grabbed a couple of cute as hell dresses, two of each type; casual maxis, one black and one multicolored, slips and sheaths…the sheaths could be rocked with a blazer if there was a meeting where that kind of look was necessary, two fabulous fit and flare dresses that could be dressed up or down, ivory and black lace dresses, two party dresses and two cocktail dress…given who we were, there was every likelihood that I’d return home with several more of those…and finally two evening gowns, one a trumpet silhouette, and the other a formal A-line with a full enough skirt that it was technically a borderline ball gown. Of course, I also had to pack all the appropriate shoes and accessories for all my outfits and dresses. I packed some makeup, not much because the stage makeup was taken care of, so I just packed my favorite things. I packed the rest of my toiletries, including my Proactive, complexion brush and my cheaper Oral B Vitality rechargeable toothbrush. Ultimately, I had one full set of luggage. But it was one that could be nested inside each other to save space.

Sam and I helped Noah make sure that he had everything he needed, then he and I helped Sam. We were done by dinner which was kind of subdued. I was pretty sure that I understood why. Even with anticipation and the knowledge that the tour could be really awesome, there was always fear of the unknown. We talked for a long time, cuddling Nikki on our laps, discussing packing and going over everything that we had packed already, tips like rolling versus folding…making sure to leave dressy items in the dry cleaner plastic to decrease their tendency to wrinkle or the chances of them getting crushed. There were things that I’d forgotten, a cardigan or hoodie for lounging around in cold places, rain coat, hiking boots for exploring the national parks we might be able to fit into our schedule. Some heavier, less expensive jeans for the same reason. Thank goodness, I was able to fit everything in. We helped Nikki get ready for bed and I read her another chapter. Then we took ourselves up and got showered and spent one of the last three nights we had left in our own bed for the summer. I was more than excited…but I was also scared as hell. I just hoped and prayed that everything went as well as we wanted and needed it to go.

 

Aretha, Sing One for Me (Cat Power)  
Puck PoV

Man, Friday morning, the night before our very first concert…of our North American tour; at some point I needed to as P!nk or Jill if every new tour’s first night was supposed to feel like we were popping our performance cherry all over again. Still the morning was pretty ridiculous. Our four buses, the KAMA trucks, the Rangeman bus, which would house a total of twelve Rangemen over the course of the summer, the eight main guards, two drivers who could also provide security, and Manny and his partner Zip when Bubbie and my little Nikolette joined us on the road. The Roadies buses were there as well, but they were simply four, stock, black WMG buses with twelve bunks each. They were not quite as tricked out as the ones we’d purchased. Lamar had taken care to have all four of the WMG buses detailed to make sure that there would be no surprises in the bunks or hidden anywhere else that could come back to bite us on the ass later. There was no practice that day, instead, everyone there had their main bags or luggage. Hudson stood to one side near our buses, Lester stood in the center near the front of Rangeman’s bus, and Lamar stood off to the other side of the lot near the WMG buses. They each gave the crew their bus assignments.

We entered our bus, the most colorful and newest. Sam and I entered first carrying Cede’s bags. Once they were all back in our bedroom, we went back out and grabbed ours. Even having looked the bus over before, it was still a little surprising how much room there was. We had room for all of our clothes and all of Cede’s shoes and accessories. There were four drawers under the bed where the shoes lived, most of Cede’s in silky bags to protect them from bouncing around. We also put our monogrammed leather overnight bags under there as well. The fourth, Hudson had found a this great divider system and it held things like Cede’s makeup, me and Sam’s grooming supplies, things like that. It took us a while to figure out a system that worked for us, but it wasn’t that bad. Then we turned to the important things. There was a tall slim cabinet in the galley that was perfect for my and Sam’s acoustic guitars. A drawer under the sofa was the perfect place for throws and Cede’s keyboard. We peaked through and the drawers and cabinets in the galley were stocked with the non-perishables like cereals, snacks…lots of healthy stuff…and everyone’s favorite not so healthy. I noticed that the corner, ‘spice rack’ looking cabinet held a bunch of bottles of vitamins and immune system boosters. Made sense, we didn’t want to get sick on the road if we could help it. The fridge only held Aquafina, Evian and Voss at that point, probably Hudson wouldn’t bother stocking it with milk and fruit and such until Monday.

Once we were completely unpacked, we took all luggage, nested it inside each other as much as we could and it was all stored in a space under the bus. I noticed, unsurprised that Hudson’s bag was already down there. I looked around and noticed that we were pretty much the last ones finished. Then again, we kind of had more shit to find room for…that was my story anyway. We watched as Brock locked up the storage space. I knew that there would be other things that would join our luggage, Brock and Jake would have to store their stuff and Dave’s extra drum kit and the extras of the bulk stuff that we’d bought to provide for everyone’s use would go in there since there was less luggage in ours than in anyone else’s. We joined the assemblage of our Crew, those who would be riding in the four buses we owned. Hudson and Lamar were having a meeting to give us all the rules of tour bus etiquette.

“Alright, for the next fifteen weeks we are all going to be living with anywhere from one to twelve new roommates. That means that we all need to practice consideration and common sense. Don’t leave your stuff all over the place. We all need to make sure that the luggage bays are always kept locked. You are responsible for the guests you bring onto the bus. I am very serious when I say, don’t bring groupies back to the buses. Get a room in a hotel then rent a car and meet us at the next stop. If you want to bring on a guest, guests should be cleared with the other people who live on this bus. However, there are some actual rules. Rule number one, there are bathrooms on the buses. There are washers and dryers…but those are only, fully usable when we stop for the night and have a water hookup. Even then, if where we are parking has shower facilities, use those because there are a lot of people trying for one small bathroom. Additionally, as part of our Tour Rider, shower facilities will always be provided for us at the venues and there will be hotel stops too. Toilets on the buses are for liquid waste only. If you have to do some serious bathroom usage, let the drivers know, they can take us into a rest area or something where you can go without harming the bus’s chemical toilet.” Lamar started. “The drivers want you all to remember, and I am quoting here, that the cardinal rule of touring is Don’t Shit on the Bus. So, don’t do it.”

I was proud of Huds when she interjected with an important side comment. “Any water from sinks on the bus should be used for washing/rinsing only. Use bottled water to brush your teeth.” She told us all with a small, shy smile.

“That’s right, Ms. Hudson. Now, this one is for those of us in bunks. Make sure that when you’re getting into your bunk, orient yourself with your feet towards the front of the bus. If the drivers have to make a hard stop, it’s better that your feet hit the bulkhead, not your heads. Lower temperatures kill germs, so the thermometers are all set at sixty-eight. If you’re cold…add a layer of clothing. If you are a light sleeper, invest in either noise canceling headphones or earplugs. The iPads in the bunks are there for your entertainment. Hudson and I will pass out the wi-fi passwords when we do the final load of the buses before the concert on Monday night. Speaking of, the buses will be at the office parking lot in Chelsea on Monday. We all need to get there by eleven-thirty. Bring all your electronics and personal items that you did not bring today, so your practice instruments, your cell phones and chargers your earphones and any snacks that you’ll want that haven’t been provided. When we load the bus and go to the Barclay Center, we officially start the tour. Anything that you don’t have, you’ll either have to have someone send you, or you will need to buy it as we go.”

Hudson also had some information about the coming days. “Our first date, the Hammerstein Ballroom is tomorrow. If it makes you feel better, then consider it our final dress rehearsal. Our sound check is at three. Everyone is due there by two-thirty. We’re using the Northeast Region NYC alternate looks for the Hammerstein and Alternate three for the Barclay Center. Ladies, make sure that you’re wearing the appropriate undergarments. Kurt and Mrs. Ruth sent everyone the digital look books for the entire tour. When you get a chance, take a moment and thank them for their hard work.” She looked down at her notes. “Our hair and makeup artists for Hammerstein and Barclay will be very familiar…they handled your hair and makeup at Halloween and for the record release party. Saturday, they will be ready for you at five.” Once she and Lamar were done with their parts, Hudson pulled us to the side as Ethan, Brantley, Darcy and Daniel went over the things they needed folks to remember. “Veronica sent eight wigs, they arrived yesterday at the office. Dee said that if Veronica ever needed her to, she would totally have her babies. I had to drag her out of the conference room once they were all unpacked. She would have still been there petting and primping them. They are just that good.”

Mercedes nodded. “She texted me to go by today and try them on. Will we have time before the spa appointments?”

“As long as things wrap up here in the next twenty to thirty minutes. We should be fine.” Hudson noted.

We headed back to hear Darcy’s wrap up. “Oh and last but not least, every one practice responsible pic posting, if it has someone other than you in the shot, get their okay before you post. Don’t be a dick.”

Daniel just gave her a look. “Chicks could do it too.”

“Chicks can be dicks. Just because we don’t have penises…it doesn’t immediately mean that we’re wonderful people. Posting a pic with a person looking ratchet behind you isn’t bitchy, but it is a dick move.” Darcy defended easily.

Daniel just chuckled. “I’m gonna quote you on that next time Riker says that I can’t say a girl is being a dick.”

“Have her give me a call? I’ll fully explain why not crossing traditional gender lines with insults and curses is actually totally sexist.” Darcy shot back. “I wrote a paper on it for my women’s studies class.”

I stepped forward. “Actually, I think it is a pretty good summary of all the rules we’ve received today, and I’m sure Hudson is planning to email us all Sunday or Monday morning…DON’T BE A DICK! We’re going to be living in each other’s pockets for the next few months. Act like you’ve got good home training. Be considerate of others and have respect for yourselves and those around you. Also…don’t be late. I just watched the Temptations movie…I can and will pull and Otis and fine your ass every time you’re more than five minutes late…capiche?” when they all said they understood, I was done talking.

Ethan had one more point. “One last thing and then I think you can all go…unless there are other plans. I will say this as KAMA’s attorney, if you bring drugs onto any of the buses and it is discovered by police, I will demand immediate drug testing of every single one of you, including my niece and her husbands. Anyone found to have taken, used, smoked whatever the cops find, it will be you and you alone up on charges. This is not that kind of party. Cops love busting tour buses. The buses are supposed to be a drug-free and smoke-free zone anyway.” He asked for their commitments verbally and then reminded them about the clauses in their contracts. I thought a few of the roadies looked a little peeved, but then Lamar reminded them that the buses they were on belonged to Warner Music Group. The music super-conglomerate could and would blackball them if they got busted with drugs on that particular tour. They could drink to their hearts content, as long as they didn’t show up to work drunk, but that was it.

Once the KAMA Team and Lamar were satisfied with everything, we reminded the KAMA crew that we were due at Faina at two. The trip to the office was pretty uneventful. It was the middle of the day and we weren’t going near the tourist areas of the city so the traffic wasn’t even as bad as it could have been. In the management conference room the wigs had been unpacked and rested on their canvas head stands that were seated on the table. They were arranged in length order. The first wig was short. Like, I didn’t know you could make short wigs. It was cut into a cute style that kind of reminded me of Halle Berry, short on the sides and back with longer, sleek blonde and deep brown bangs that could be feathered for volume. It was fun and cutely sexy. The second was a sleek, sexy chin length bob. It would look good with the shorter, less formal stage outfits that Sexy Mama would be wearing in the hotter venues. It was a pretty deeper brown with barely there lighter brown highlights.

Her third wig really looked like a shorter version of what her own natural hair looked like. It was her natural color a brown darker than mine, but slightly lighter than actually black, but it only brushed her shoulders. Kind of made me horny thinking about that summer we shot our loads all over her kinky curls as a sayonara to them before she buried them back under a weave for the school year. Her real hair was about as long as the fourth wig. It was a shoulder length, deep brown wig with streaks of auburn and lighter brown shot through the big curls and sleeker, side swept bangs. The fifth was barely longer than the fourth, but the curls were tighter and darker. Like most of the wigs it had a side part on the left side. The sixth was the first one with a middle part. It was long enough that the ends curled under her boobs, where the previous one had rested on her cleavage. It was a darker brown with lots of golden brown highlights. The curls were really loose, like she would do with big rollers to give volume more than actual factual curls. The seventh was even longer, waist length or so. It had tighter curly waves and was a shade or three darker than her natural hair. It had a side part and I just knew she would look hot like fire in it. the final wig looked even more like Ms. Mercedes Jones than the others, though all of them seemed as if Veronica had created wigs that showed different sides to Cede. It was the longest of all the wigs. It went down to her hips and it just kind of waved like a mermaid’s hair from a center part. It was the darkest of all the wigs too.

Sam and I exchanged a look as Dee started helping Mercedes try on the wigs. She was telling our wife how she could use them with wig mics if she wanted to since she had them when Sam and I pulled Hudson to the side. “Have we paid Veronica yet?”

Our PA shook her head. “I have the invoice, but I think she low balled it because how much she loves Mercedes. I looked online and wigs that good…custom made could run anywhere from two grand to four grand each. Veronica only billed you guys four thousand. That might cover the cost of materials…but Dee said she had never seen wigs that were made so well. She swears that each one must have taken hours and hours of work…probably thirty to forty hours each.”

Sam nodded. “Puck…that’s what…thirty-two thousand, right?”

“Yeah…I’d round it up to thirty-five or forty though. Since the wigs are for the tour, we can seek reimbursement from Warner for a large part of it.” I pointed out.

Sam looked at Hudson decisively. “Veronica earned every dollar of the forty thousand we’re sending her. Can you go and have Saul cut a check on the Barclay’s account? We can sign it and send it off before we leave.”

Our PA-slash-big sister nodded and gave us a smile filled with pride. “Not a problem. I can bring it by Faina later and overnight it. She’ll have it before you guys take the stage tomorrow.”

“Good…now any idea how to separate Cede from her new hair…we’re due at the spa in like twenty minutes.”

It took some doing, and we were a few minutes late but we did get there. Plus, since we had basically rented the spa for the day, I mean there were thirty-two of us there for services, they didn’t have room for anyone else. We all got Cede’s favorite package, the four and half hour long ‘Ultimate Relaxation’ package with an added deep-sea mud detoxifying body wrap. The packages weren’t the end of it either though. There were the wax jobs…all the girls were waxed from stems to neck. Several of the guys decided to join the Dam Bros in having their man stubble waxed. Our bold and brave drummer went all in, by the time the waxers were finished with him, he was completely hair free. He kind of hated waxing, but Anika was still paying for it, so he did it just to stick it to ‘the man’ or ‘the woman’ as the case may have been. Sam and I did get the earlobe waxing and we had the back of our necks waxed…just to save Dee some time every week. After we left the spa, we made it home just in time to partake of Bautista’s delicious dinner.

We spent the night chilling around the family room. That day had been Nikki’s last school day, so we were treated to learning all about field day and how she and M&M had sucked at most of the games, but crushed the egg drop and any of the more science based ones. Sexy Mama, Bubbie, Kurt, Tana and Tina were going through the look books and deciding which wig would go with which look. We actually called it a pretty early night. Mainly so we could bone an extra time or two…we needed to say good bye to Cede’s zebra chairs. The next morning, we took care of our hygiene, threw on some pajamas, and pulled Nik-Nak up to the man cave and watched the Saturday morning cartoons of our youth. The good Teen Titans, The Batman, Static Shock, Jackie Chan Adventures, which was way better than most people would have thought, Code Name: Kids Next Door…man we had some seriously decent cartoons. Thank Yeshiva for Netflix and Hulu. It was a great way to bond with our little girl. We made sure that we scheduled time to FaceTime with her every day. We made sure that Hudson’s number was in her phone too. “If you need us, I don’t care if you know for sure that we’re in the middle of a set on stage, call us or Hudson. We won’t have our phones with us, but Hudson can get us if you need us okay?”

“I will.” She promised solemnly. “I’m gonna miss all three of you. But Bubbie said that we’ll come and meet you guys the week before Father’s Day, and be with you guys that whole week and go with you to Lima.”

“I’ll get to see you for Father’s Day…that will be the best gift you can give me and Sam.” I told her in complete honestly. We stayed there until our stomachs demanded sustenance. It was a good way to spend a morning. After brunch though, we had to get focused. Showers, somewhat out door acceptable clothing and we made it to the venue by two. The roadies, including Az and Karofsky, had already set up the stage so we could work with the techs and get the lighting and sound checks done. Everyone was there on time and we had our shit handled within an hour. That gave Max Scheinder, our opening act for the region, and Cassidy plenty of time to handle their shit too. While they were doing their checks, we adjourned to a large area back stage and were able to get in a quick but intense practice as a warm up. We were running the default set list that night. So, to be honest our main concern would be making sure that we did our changes right. At least that was what I was most nervous about.

Lamar and Brantley both checked the room over to make sure that the Rider had been fulfilled. We had everything we needed. The promoter had provided a really nice, healthy late lunch. The room had everything, including the brown M&Ms item, the specific, Air Wick lavender and chamomile essential oils plug ins…we were able to stay hydrated and get ready for the show. We asked them to make sure that the Crew had everything they needed and were assured that they did. After we showered, the three of us made sure that we moisturized and put on our MeUndies, Sam and I finally learned the name of the underwear that Kurt found for us that was so awesome. Sexy Mama put on her bra, the shiny, skin colored, thicker than pantyhose but still pretty sheer, shaper body stocking that covered her from her shoulders down to the vamps of her feet and the shaper camisole she’d be wearing for the first look of the evening and then put on a pretty kimono type robe she brought with her. Trina and Dee handled the three of our hair and makeup, while the others were prepped in their dressing rooms. Since Rickey wasn’t taking Cede’s weave out until the next day, Dee was giving her hair water waves with bumped under edges. Her makeup was stage ready, big bold lips and eyes and everything else just ramped up and smoothed out.

Sam and I had it pretty easy, we just got the spray stage makeup stuff that made sure the lights wouldn’t make us look like week old corpses. We sprayed antiperspirant over most of our bodies so we wouldn’t sweat like pigs under them either. Then we chilled out and watched some TV while we waited on them to finish with Cede. When she was finally released looking all glittery and fucking sexy as hell, me and Sam started getting dressed. Apparently, just as in regular fashion, there wasn’t a whole lot to men’s stage apparel. We were both in lighter colored khakis, and two different colors of the same Goodlife scallop hem v-neck tee shirts. Ivory for Sam and kind of faded red for me. We were in slightly different colored Timberland Westmore apron toe boots, mine were kind of darker than Sam’s. By the time we were done, Cede had donned her Gucci embroidered wide leg cuffed pants and her Steve Madden Andrea Cross strap platform sandals that were the perfect shade of red to match the word ‘Loved’ that was embroidered on her pants’ cuff. The pants were creased…I mean razor sharply creased. She looked really good…but it was nothing compared to how she looked when she finally put on the Alexander McQueen vintage ivory silk embroidered cropped jacket that she and Bubbie had found in a consignment store in her size and everything, and built our whole look around it. Every piece sparkled with small, shiny, glittery beadwork we’d paid a few FIT seniors a shitload to hand sew onto them. But the beadwork ebbed and flowed subtly, so it didn’t look overdone. Ms. Mercedes Jones looked like nothing less than a total boss.

Shortly after we were all dressed, one of the sound guys came in and fit us with our mics. We did a few more vocal exercises just to get things all warmed back up. It was a surprise when a stage manager hit us with the ten minute warning. We went out and had a group prayer with our band, dancers and singers. Sam took charge of it since Joe was out front with the swag sales. “Lord, we’ve come this fair by faith, leaning on your strength and wisdom. We know that you haven’t brought us this far to leave us. Lord, you know how many hearts are represented here. You know that we don’t all call you by the same name, but we know that you blessed us with the talents that have brought us to this spot. Please support us and take care of us your children. Keep us safe from hurt, harm and danger…accidents and illness. We ask that you allow us to have a great performance tonight. That our fans and even our critics and detractors leave this show feeling like it was awesome and epic and worth every one of their hard earned pennies. We hope that you will do so for the entirety of our tour. Thank you. In the name of the father, son and Holy Ghost and whatever other names those assembled call you by, we ask it all…AMEN!”

The last word was said all together. And we did a quick check to make sure that everyone was good, they were all ready to go. So we took that stage and for the next fifty-six minutes we owned that bitch. Our first set was ridic. We’d decided to do a mix of old and new songs but no matter what song we sang, the whole audience seemed to know every word. They loved us. The cheer that went up when we took the stage was so loud it made my heart jump. It was awe-inspiring and strangely humbly. I wanted to be worthy of their adulation. I didn’t even have the words it would take to explain exactly how I felt in moments like that. But the very best part was sharing it with Sexy Mama and Sammy Boy. The fourteen songs for that set were a mix of fast and slow, loving and more sexy plus a few that were just plain fun. Even though we had Artie working his licks full time, Sam and I both had our guitars and we’d hop on those when the song called for it, or when it was a Cede lead song. After we ended the set, which started with the original version of ‘Rescue Me’, with ‘Homewrecker’, a Cede led song from our second album…we headed back into the back.

In thirty minutes, we killed six bottles of water between us. We all took a piss and then we changed into our second look for the night. I was lucky, it was dark denim and a dark Henley for me…similar for Sam, but his shirt was a casual button down with quasi military details. We were both in boots again, mine, my favorite tech boots and Sam a pair of black cowboy boots that he’d liberated from Sander years before. Cede though…she looked sexy as fuck in a bright, bold purple, one shoulder jumpsuit that hugged all her curves just right and had a kind of flared leg. Black wedge sandals completed the look. Her hair was half pulled back to show off the quick makeup change too. Our spray on shit was refreshed and in no time at all we were back on that stage rocking our hearts out.

The second set started with Sam leading ‘Some Gave All’, his ode to the memory of his grandfather’s brother and all of our service men. Probably ‘Hard Out Here’ should be moved from immediately after that moving song. The set ended with a slow, meaningful love song, ‘Spend My Life with You’ where we all led different verses. It might be a good idea to switch that song with ‘Hard Out Here’…have a mellower song behind a deep one and leave them laughing and dancing for DJ Ca$$. As the final strains of that song floated away on the screams of the crowd, Cassidy’s tables and set up came through the center of the stage and we retreated to our dressing room. Our second quick change was super easy for me and Sam…we just had to change our shirts. The deep purple shirts were light enough to tell they weren’t black, but they were dark enough that you might think they were in some other light. Mine was a simple tee, Sam’s was a baseball tee. It was cool that our stylists made sure to include our personalities in their choices. But then again, they knew us better than most industry stylists ever would know their clients. So, it was probably easier. Mercedes Jones had, before becoming famous read an article in Cosmo that outlined how even the most fashion forward artists actually all dressed pretty much alike. So, she had decided that rather than fall into those pitfalls, she would…with the permission of pretty much every fashion house she loved…bring fashion onto the concert stage.

Cede sure as hell did that for our opening show’s Finale. A Moschino cropped one-shoulder top showed off her sexy shoulder and curvy breasts in a way I could almost guarantee the designer had totally intended. It was made for our Sexy Mama. It wouldn’t even be sold in stores until the following year. The black Rag and Bone high rise step hem capri skinny jeans showed the world how sexy thick, shapely thighs and strong curved calves could be. Then she finished it off with a pair of Louboutin black leather and gold metal sling back pumps that she’d fallen in love with the second Bubbie had showed them to her. Where Tana, Tina and Xena had been in a black version of the same jumpsuit she’d worn out for the second set, for the finale and encore, the girls were in similar, but more affordable versions of the look. Their one shoulder tops were almost the same shade of purple, but they came from Macys as did their black, capri skinny-jeans and black, sling back pumps. 

The final set went well. There were no technical problems. The third set started with one of my leads, ‘Lost In Your Eyes’, in fact, I had three solos in that set, Lost, ‘Volvo Driving Soccer Mom’…my ode to all the MILFs I’d boned before…and ‘Almost Lover’. The wardrobe matrons had our white robes ready to go after ‘Love Me More’. So, when we launched into the slower, almost gospel-folk sounding ‘The Ballad of Tamir Rice’ which we followed with our cover of the sorrowful song’s inspiration, ‘The Death of Emmitt Till’. Then they were immediately ready to grab them so we could move into the Sam led ‘Insensitive’. The set finished with Cassidy coming back up through the floor and Idris Elba’s video started playing on the big screens around the ballroom. Our part of the concert had started with our original version of ‘Rescue Me’ and it ended with the remix. I loved that it put Cass on stage with us…to me that was how I liked it best, our whole Crew on one stage all together.

We left the stage, but allowed ourselves to be called out for an encore. But before we sang a lick, I moved to center stage. “Hello Hammerstein, have you been having fun?” I asked and the roar of approval that came back at me almost made me stagger back. “Good, that what we want. We want every one of you to have a great experience tonight and basically every day as you live your lives. That being said, one of our friends, tomorrow she undergoes surgery to make her outsides match who she has been all along. If you don’t mind, could we all take a second to pray to whatever deity you praise, or just send well wishes out to the universe for her, if you don’t believe in any. As Mercedes says, even if you don’t believe in God, He or She, still believes in you. Still hears you when you ask for something major. So, I think, if we all ask for this at the same time…I’m not going to say her name…because the last thing her doctors need is their hospital being blocked by protesters who think they know better than God. But if we all ask that she make it through the surgery, and any subsequent ones she might have to have well, and that the surgery be a success, then I do believe that that is exactly what will happen. So, just a moment of silence to ask for all the good for her.” I waited until I counted to sixty, which without the Mississippi’s, was probably more like thirty seconds. Then I spoke again. “Thank you all. Yeshiva Bless. Now Back to the music!”

We’d saved our sexiest songs for the end of the night on purpose. Including ‘Holler’ and ‘Pillow Talk’. Then you could tell that the sexy had gotten all the way down into Sexy Mama because she threw them a cover of Janet Jackson’s ‘Anytime Any Place’ that had me harder than a fucking brick. We finished the encore with ‘Rub You the Right Way’ and, I wasn’t even going to lie to myself…if it hadn’t been for Binkie, Junior and Hudson, we wouldn’t have made it back to our dressing room before me and Sam had Mercedes screaming our name. There was a lot on the fucking rider that I’d put in to be an asshole…I knew it. but I was damn glad to see that the promoter had come through with the unopened twelve pack of Trojan double X-L condoms. I know that we had that pack opened before Hudson could close the door behind them. As awesome as the previous four hours had been, the best part of the night had to be feeling Cede’s tight pussy clenching and squeezing me as the two of us blew Sammy Boy’s cock until he came all over our chests.

The dressing room had a small shower in the bathroom, so we took turns getting cleaned up. The guy even had Cede’s Dove soap. Once we were clean, we got dressed and Sam had found a note asking that we let the promoter know when we were ready for the food listed on our after-concert rider. So, we texted Lamar to ask that he let the guy know. The dude’s people brought in hot buffalo wings, Cede’s olives, the champagne, cold water and the small sandwich tray. We tore through the food like we’d tore through the condoms. Hudson, Trina and Dee came in and had everything packed up in a trice, then we got ourselves together for the masses. With the door open, the people with the VIP backstage passes could start to come and get their things signed and shit. We pressed the flesh and took pictures and kissed babies and everything for two hours then things started shutting down. People started heading to after parties. We grabbed our shit and headed our happy asses back up to Harlem. It had been a long ass night and we didn’t have many that we could sleep in our own beds left.

Man, I couldn’t wait for the morning trades to see what the critics had to say about our opening night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An early Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans
> 
> We have no words to apologize for the wrongs we've done to the rest of the world by not electing an adult to represent/run our country. I promise that I didn't vote for him & will resist with my last breath.
> 
> I'm going to a cook-out tomorrow, so I decided to post early rather than late.
> 
> Let me know how you liked it.  
> Let me know that you're still, in fact, reading it.  
> Give me a good recipe for something non-traditional I can take to this cook-out.
> 
> Anything just review.
> 
> Oh, and its not Betaed, so let me know if you find any mistakes. Please & Thank you.
> 
> TTFN,  
> Anni


	2. Escape Velocity (The Chemical Brothers), Feeling Good (Nina Simone) & Who Says (Selena Gomez)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look at how some of the rest of the universe is starting their summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to SnowDove 30 for making me quite popular at the 4th of July BBQ.   
> You rock!!!

Chapter 2  
Escape Velocity (The Chemical Brothers)  
Ambient PoV  
Lima, Ohio

By the official beginning of the summer, Rachel Berry had been convalescing at the Lost Creek Healthcare and Rehab Center for an entire month. In that time, she had regained full consciousness and she was no longer constrained by any casts or bandages. She was, however, still regaining the full use of her motor functions. Her fine motor skills had not been noticeably impaired, but she seemed to have trouble walking more than a few steps or standing for more than a moment or two at a time. Since Hiram and Antwan had full time jobs and three very small children at home, it was decided that Rachel should receive her rehabilitation in patient. The truth, unknown to her fathers, was that Rachel preferred it that way. She knew that when she returned home, it would be entirely too easy to forget herself. And move in a way that was not all congruous with the statements she had made to the doctors and nurses overseeing her care. For while Rachel truly felt that their care left much to be desired…it was still far better than the alternative.

The alternative was facing a life with little to no immediate way to achieve her destiny. Once she was released, Rachel had nowhere to go but back to her fathers’ basement. While NYU had been sympathetic to her assault…her new situation…the truth was that her grades had been less than stellar. Not a single one of her teachers had felt that she was worth the drama and trouble of holding her place. Oh, they had prettied it up, couched it in Rachel needing to take the time she needed to heal. A certain Dean of Students had bluntly told the Misters Berry that Rachel added nothing positive to the campus environment. When apprised of the events of the spring semester of her freshman year and the exact details of her interactions around the campus…many Dr. Girardi knew of from others involved, but had no way to prove…Antwan and Hiram had been forced to admit that the professors and administrator were right not to hold a place for their eldest daughter. Once she was fully healed, and had proper medical clearance, she could seek readmittance as a second semester sophomore. But she would be subject to their stringent entrance standards. No one said aloud that her grades the previous three semesters weren’t good enough to get her back in that prestigious school. No one had to.

It was an unfortunate set back but not, Rachel was sure, an insurmountable one. She just had to manage to convince her fathers to let her have some time to find her center. And to give her the money to find a suitable publicist. Then she would return to New York and take Broadway by storm. With her new, slightly -almost- tragic back story and the news coverage thereof, the cache of her name would provide could well open doors that her incomparable talent had not. Rachel realized that she had been very naïve, believing that pure talent and a superlative work ethic could see her reach the heights that were her due, But the success of Mercedes Jones, a much lesser talent no matter what anyone else said, as far as Rachel was concerned, had nevertheless taught Rachel a valuable lesson. In modern America, titillation and sensationalization were what created meteoric rises in status, wealth and power. Rachel finally understood that…after all it was the only theory that made the universe make sense again.

At first, Rachel had been bothered and bewildered by the news coverage after the vicious attack on her person. The news anchors had barely covered her and her condition. She was only relevant in that she had a connection to KAMA. Which really was a stupid name, by the way. The journalists spoke of how despite the acrimony between them and Rachel, Mercedes, Sam and Noah…along with Santana, Brittany, Artie, Blaine and Kurt had rushed immediately to the hospital and even offered to cover any bill if the hospital administrators needed such assurance until her fathers could arrive with insurance documentation. One of the news stories had even included a short statement for their publicist that basically said that no matter what had happened between Rachel and the rest of her old friends, her fathers and baby siblings were a part of KAMA’s family and KAMA always took care of their family. Initally, Rachel had seethed at Mercedes, Sam and Noah trying to claim her family as their own. However, after hearing the thoughts and gossip of the nursing staff at Lost Creek, Rachel had had an epiphany. Even with all their jealousy and envy and hatred, her eight former friends had made a strategic choice and it had worked. One couldn’t buy that kind of positive publicity.

She never even thought of the fact that her former friends had anything other than selfish and self-serving motives. As she would have in their position. Rachel would never understand that KAMA was not trying to steal her family. They just wanted to support their people. She would also never understand why the nurses were always playing rock-paper-scissors outside her door. The truth was that none of the nurses, orderlies…even the doctors…wanted to deal with the annoying recovering coma patient. The day shift charge nurse said it best, ‘she was a hell of a lot more pleasant to deal with when she was dead to the world and couldn’t help shitting herself.’

Still, Rachel was using the time of her convalescence to regroup and renew her focus. On a Saturday in May, one the entertainment media refused to allow anyone to forget was the first night of KAMA’s sold out North American tour, Rachel stood staring out her room’s window, practicing Schwartz’s Meadowlark. She turned, singing still as a knock sounded at her door. She quickly took a seat at a nearby table before telling the person to come in. Shelby Cochran entered with a small bouquet of miniature roses. “Rachel, how are you feeling?” the older woman asked pleasantly. “Antwan and Hiram said that you were up to receiving visitors.”

Upon awakening, Rachel had immediately put an end to visitors. She refused to allow anyone to see her in her diminished state. She’d been kept unaware of the fact that many of her former classmates’ parents had been by with things to brighten her room or food for whichever of her fathers had been sitting with her at the time. Like the nursing center staff, they too thought that she’d been far, far easier to deal with when completely insensate.

Rachel gave her biological mother an appraising look. “I’m much improved from being comatose after having been beaten to the edge of life by some ruffians. I am still experiencing some distressing weakness in the leg that was so severely broken. I am sure that it is only temporary. How are you and your daughter fairing?” She returned politely. If there was a bit of bite to the final question, neither woman acknowledged it.

“Beth and I are doing really, very well. She will start kindergarten in the fall. She already knows all her colors, letters, numbers. She is already showing highly advance mathematical skills, actually. And she can write the entire family’s names…all of us, me and David, Quinn and Francine, Commune, their parents and brothers and sisters. David and I married last September and Quinn and Noah have given me their blessing to allowing him to formally adopt her.” Shelby told her with a smile unlike any Rachel had ever seen on the other woman’s face in any of their previous interactions. Shelby looked happy in a way that was all encompassing…perfectly, purely happy. Rachel found herself a little uncomfortable in the face of Shelby’s joy. “I was saddened to learn of your attack. It was very startling for something like that to happen to someone I know and care about. I can only imagine how horrified and scared your poor parents were when they got the call.”

Rachel found that despite the work she had done…the brutal annihilation of any and all sentiment she’d hoped to breed between herself and Shelby Cochran…she had held out some residual hope that Shelby would have heard about the attack and realized that she wanted to, needed to, take her rightful place in Rachel’s life. It died a little bit more in that moment. But Rachel considered herself to be a consummate actress. She forced a smile onto her face and pretended to be unbothered by the dismissal of her wants and desires, by what she perceived as the rejection of her love. “Yes, it was very hard on them.” she said in what she hoped Shelby would believe was sorrow at what Hiram and Antwan had been put through rather than for her own lack of maternal affection. “I am sure that it was made even more difficult by the fact that they had to choose between me and the babies.” That was actually a thought that brought Rachel immeasurable amounts of comfort. When forced by the hand of fate to choose between the triplets and herself, Hiram and Antwan Berry had made the right choice and rushed to her side, leaving those unnecessary carbuncles to the care of veritable strangers.

Shelby noticed a strange glint in Rachel’s eyes and, in her own desire for a positive outcome for the first child she’d born, misread it as simply the continued after effects of having such a close beush with death. She knew that, though he dealt with the situation in a healthy manner and spoke with a campus counselor, Finn was still sometimes haunted by his accident and the days and weeks when he had been locked in a nightmare of what might have been. The two women, so similar and yet so different, related only by blood conversed a little more before Shelby finally reached the point of her visit. “Rachel, I came to check on you, yes…but your fathers have been very good about keeping me up to date on how you are doing. There is something that I need to tell you. I wanted to be the first to tell you, in fact. I rather think it would be disconcerting to hear this news from someone else. I-well-David and I are pregnant.”

Rachel was so surprised that she didn’t even take a moment to censure her words or try and figure out what emotion she was probably expected to express in that situation. “But you’re old.” She blurted out.

Shelby shook her head. “I’m forty-three, Rachel. Women older than that have children every day. and while it wasn’t planned or even expected, we are happy about the news. I know that you felt I adopted Beth to replace you, so I’m not sure what this knowledge will make you feel. Bur I do care about you and thought that it would be best if you heard it ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’ as it were.”

Rachel couldn’t have put words to how she felt in that moment if someone had offered her a million dollars and the Tony for the Lead in Funny Girl. So, she fell back on the manners she’d learned so well as a child. “I am sure that you and Mr. Martinez, that is right? Well, I am sure that you and your husband are very happy and I wish you a healthy pregnancy and baby.”

Shelby felt the dismissal inherent in Rachel’s tone and allowed the twenty-one-year-old to have the last word and said her goodbyes. As soon as the door closed behind Shelby, Rachel flew into a rage. She destroyed the bouquet Shelby had brought with her and all the other blossoms, blooms and balloons that decorated her small but private room. Finally, she sank to the floor, hoarse from holding back the screams of rage, anger and jealousy that were pulsating through her heart, her very being. The tears that flowed down her cheeks honest as most before them had never been. The nurse found her an hour later still on the floor awash in envious anger and hate.

Feeling Good (Nina Simone)  
Ambient PoV  
Chicago, Illinois

James Lamar Gibbs, the third was having one hell of a summer. He’d returned to Cleveland and spent a week with his mother and younger sisters, one of whom was entering her senior year of high school that fall and took every chance she could to pick his brain on choosing a college. He then spent a weekend in Lima with his girlfriend of more than two years. James relationship with Quinn Fabray may have begun as something neither was looking for…but it was built on a foundation of friendship and the fact that they had taken the time to get to know each other more deeply than anyone else could ever claim to. James was always understanding of her point of view. Quinn never seemed to think that his thoughts or feelings were less valid than her own. They treated each other with respect and love. James protected Quinn where it was important, but also trusted that she could, would and did have the strength to protect herself if the situation called for it. James liked Quinn’s friends and was liked in return. Thankfully, the same was true of how James friends felt about Quinn. They did like her, though, other than his Dalton friends, they had less in common with her than her friends had with James. They would be moving in together come the fall and there was something very important to James that needed to happen first.

Unbeknownst to Quinn, James had already started making plans and moving on them to see to it that his respect for her was never in any doubt from any person…ever. His first step had been getting together with her two best friends. There had been no hesitation or reservations about contacting Santana Lopez and Mercedes Jones. The two, very different, young women had been his girl’s besties since long before he knew her. One was so close they called each other sister and the other was the best frenemy a girl could ever ask for. A trip to Manhattan was out of the question, however. No way could he manage it without Quinn knowing about it. But, it was almost too easy to arrange a Facetime session with the young women, busy though they both were. As soon as he had laid out the reason for the call, Santana had immediately informed him that no woman in the Fabray family had said yes to a ring not from Tiffany’s in over a hundred and fifty years.

“The women in Quinn’s family have the words ‘Old Money’ tattooed on their asses at birth.” She informed him seriously.

It was Mercedes that filled in the details of Quinn’s preferences. “Quinn likes simple, elegant jewelry. A solitaire with a large, good quality stone. Something that speaks of wealth but it shouldn’t be any bigger than two or three carats. Apparently, Mr. Fabray’s mother considered Quinn’s mom’s ring gauche and unladylike at five.” She told him helpfully.

James took their advice down. Yes, he made notes. He went through every ring on the Tiffany website. He wanted to make sure that he found her the perfect ring, even if it wasn’t specifically designated as an engagement ring. Ultimately, after much consultation with Santana and Mercedes, the ring he chose for her was a Tiffany’s engagement collection ring. The Lucida with a simple polished band and a two and a half carat diamond seemed to be the perfect choice. But before he plucked down upwards of fifty thousand dollars on a ring, he wanted one last opinion. Circumstances had ensured that the perfect person was close by. James was living and working with his Great-Uncle Steve in Chicago and fairly nearby in the same city, Francine Fabray was interning with a preeminent psychiatrist. The future in laws were easily able to meet for lunch near the Doctor’s office in the Lakeview area of town.

As soon as he pushed in Francine’s chair at La Creperie, James asked her how she was doing. They both knew he was asking about far more than her physical well-being. Judith Fabray had been released from prison several weeks before. Francine had, by virtue of being the Fabray sister closest to Lima, been the one present when Judith took possession of her things. Attorney Patterson had been there as Francine and Quinn’s legal representation, but Judith had still managed to make thing as miserable as possible. She’d even tried contacting both of her daughters…despite a continued court order prohibiting any and all contact not initiated by the daughters Fabray.

Francine answered him honestly since she knew that James was only asking because he really was concerned. “I think I finally understand what Danica Jones meant when I asked her the same question a few days before that Macardo asshole came forward and all those news people were still trying to claim that KAMA had done the whole tape thing on purpose. She told me that her ‘soul was weary’. I didn’t get it then. I just thought that she was talking about being really tired. I get it now. She wasn’t physically tired but everything within her had felt like it had taken a beating. That’s how I’m feeling now.” She confessed. “Mom-Judith- calls constantly trying to force her way back into our lives. I know that I can turn her in for it. I know that I probably should turn her in for it. But I can’t seem to make myself make that call, ya know?”

James nodded. “Peaches is having the same dilemma. Things were better when we were still at school. It seemed like your mother called a lot less when Que had classes and studying and everything to worry about. Plus, she was ten hours from Lima…so there was none of the stalking kind of ‘running into her in the grocery store’ thing. What does she even want?” 

Francine shook her head in befuddlement. “Who even knows. Her alimony is still the same, yes…but Daddy pays her rent and basic utilities. When you point that out, she just complains about the apartment she’s living in. Which, again, I don’t get. It’s in a nice area of Lima, and okay, it not luxurious or huge but it’s still a nice place. And strings had to be pulled to get them to even rent to her with a record, so one would think she would be grateful.” Francine saw the side eye James gave her and questioned it. “What’s that look for?”

“Frannie, you know I already consider you my sister, so I can say thins and you know that you and Peaches are exceptions to the rule. I’ve met your father, your mother, and even a few of your cousins…don’t not a one understand the concept of being grateful.”

“Yeah, well…” she couldn’t argue the truth of his words. “Probably Lucy learned it from the Joneses and taught it to me. Because I am grateful that my sister has a man who had loved and supported her through all the madness. So, let’s leave all the Fabray family drama behind. I want to see the ring that you’ve picked. I’ve gotta make sure that you’re getting something she’s gonna love.”

James had the screenshot pulled up in a heartbeat. “Santana said that it had to be Tiffany’s to satisfy the family tradition. And Mercedes said that it should be simple and elegant with a quality stone that was large, but not too big or it would be gauche and gaudy. Something about your grandmother and mom.”

Francine smiled as she mentally assessed the ring for all the qualities that would most please her sister. It had them all. “It’s a great ring. So, perfect for her. I’m sure that Quinnie is going to love it.” she assured him. James let out a sigh of relief. “She’s a size five and a half.”

“Santana and Mercedes made sure I would never forget. I think they did everything but make me write it five times each like spelling words in elementary school.” He admitted.

She laughed. “You know, my mother made my father buy her a ridiculously gaudy ring. Five carat center stone with a pave band…all because she wanted a ring bigger than any of her friends had. Grandmere wasn’t a fan of the thing…but do you know, the only times she ever said anything verbally about it? When Judith said something to crush Quinn’s happiness in front of Grandmere. I clearly remember this one time. Lucy had been proudly telling Grandmere and Grandpapa about her grades, which were always stellar, often even better than mine. Judith cut her off…told her that it was unbecoming of a lady to boast. Even though our grandparents wanted to know and I had just finished doing basically the exact same thing. Then Judith threw in a little dig about the fact that Lucy was a little plumper and had Grandpapa’s nose which was Aquiline to say the least. She always did that…made Lucy feel as if she was lesser because she wasn’t exactly like me and Judith.”

“Well, Grandmere watched the smile drop from Lucy’s face. She didn’t say anything immediately. But as soon as she was able to, she steered the conversation to Judith’s ring. ‘Yes, Judith, I suppose that Russell really had no choice but to get you such a hefty, gaudy engagement ring. It creates the illusion that your fingers are thinner, longer…more ladylike. Thank goodness that Lucille and Francine have hands more like mine.’ I watched as Judith’s face looked as crestfallen as Lucy’s had. Grandmere would look very satisfied then. She had made Mother feel self-conscious and horrid…just like Judith had done to Quinn.”

The two of them at the table shared a laugh over the savory crepes they’d enjoyed as they talked. “I think I would have liked your Grandmere.”

Frannie shook her long blonde hair. “Probably not. She wasn’t a racist, but she was definitely a serious snob. While your family is rich enough to be somewhat acceptable, she’d have still had issues. You’re nouveau riche, you know.” She told him in an exaggeratedly snooty way that sent them back into peals of laughter. The rest of their lunch was hurriedly wrapped up to go when Francine realized that her lunch hour was almost over.

As soon as they left the restaurant that Tuesday, James started making the arrangements. He made sure that his money was right so that he’d be able to get the ring of his woman’s dreams without negatively impacting their shared plans. He already had the tickets for KAMA’s Chicago stop, complete with VIP backstage passes. With a single phone call, he made the arrangements with Mercedes, Sam and Noah for one hell of a memorable proposal. He made reservations at a lovely restaurant near the United Center for dinner before the concert and reserved a room at the Four Seasons for them the weekend before the concert and the night thereof. James actually didn’t have much in the way of expenses during the week. He was staying with his great-uncle and his great-aunt Marjorie so he didn’t have rent. But by the same turn, when he and Quinn met up in Warsaw, Indiana to spend a weekend together, James paid for everything. It wasn’t a problem…he made good money doing IT work for his great-uncle and aunt’s foundation and production company for the last couple of summers. But they had big plans and he didn’t want to mess anything up. To ensure that things went as he wanted them to go, James started practicing some of the austerity measures he’d grown up with. No more eating three meals a day in restaurants. He woke up early and made himself breakfast. It was just for him, since Steve was already in the second hour of his show when James got up and it would be a few more hours before Marjorie would start her day. their housekeeper always offered to make his breakfast, but he hated creating more work for Serena. Besides, she made his lunch and it was always tons better than the sandwich and chips that he’d have probably made himself if left to his own devices. He left his car in the garage and used mass transit. He left Starbucks alone and drank coffee from the break room at the office. Small things that added up.

Of course, the changes didn’t go unnoticed. Steve Harvey saw the belt tightening and decided that he wanted to know what was at the root of it. He grabbed James one Saturday morning about two weeks after the changes started. “Alright Kid, what’s up?” Steve started as they drove to the comedian’s favorite barbershop. “You managed to go through all your college fund even with all those scholarships you got? You didn’t develop a gambling habit or nothing, did you?”

“Naw Unc. Nothing like that.” James said shaking his head. He’d been very blessed. Steve had set him up with a fat college fund when he was younger, with his mom as the administrator of the account. But James had won scholarships that took care of roughly half his tuition and room and board and fees every semester. Rather than take the extra money back, Steve and Kay had decided that she would pay the full amount before the scholarships hit. Then when James had a surplus, the school would give him the extra money. The excess funding usually came to around twenty-five grand. James never put more than five thousand into his checking account and the rest was placed into a high interest saving account. The truth was that James Gibbs was a saver. He didn’t spend to excess and he saved a lot of what he earned over the summer. Plus, a month didn’t go by that his family members didn’t slip some change into his checking account just to make sure he had what he needed. “I’m just…I’m getting ready to get Quinn an engagement ring. Been two years, time to put a ring on it.”

“Aw hell, you sure you got enough. I mean, I know a man wants to do this kind of shit for his damn self…stand on his own two feet…but that white girl is old money rich. You can’t get down on one knee with some gumball machine-cracker jack box ring.” Steve returned wisely. The entertainment giant actually liked Quinn Fabray. She was not exactly who he expected his great-nephew to end up with, but she was intelligent, strong, beautiful, had dignity and loyalty and money of her own. She was also connected to one of the most popular music groups on the scene. Thanks to that connection, Steve always got an interview when they were doing publicity and they sometimes just called in to shoot the shit on air. That had expanded the market share of the Steve Harvey Morning Show by giving him a large new, younger audience. James solidifying his relationship with Quinn Fabray solidified Steve’s ability to count KAMA’s fans as a part of his audience.

“I’m okay on the ring.” James said honestly. Taking the chance to get another opinion on his choice, he whipped out his phone and showed Steve the screen shot that was still saved to his phone.

Steve sounded appropriately impressed. “That’s a nice ring…Tiffany’s, that’s good. You ran it past her sister and best friend right?”

James told him the story of the Facetime meeting and his lunch with Francine. “So, yeah, I’m confident that she’s going to love the ring. I’m just wanting to make sure that I don’t mess up all the stuff already in the works. You know we’re getting ready to close on that house in New Haven for all of us.”

“The one that you all had my lawyers help you with the LLC paperwork so you and all your roommates could go in together to buy it?” Steve clarified. When James nodded, he asked a follow up. “You all did a partnership agreement too, right?”

“Yes sir, ten people all with equal shares.” James assured his great-uncle. Everyone had agreed, over Kat’s objections, that she too would have an equal share even though she didn’t have as much to put in on the down payment. It was spelled out specifically in the partnership agreement just in case one of them suddenly developed asshole tendencies.

“Good…never let it be said that you got fucked in the game because you were too damn trusting.” Steve warned. “Speaking of…you need to go ahead and get your mind right…you two are going to need to have a prenup…not just for you, but for your girl.” 

James knew his great uncle was right…but he still didn’t like the implications of a prenup. However, he just said a very respectful, “Yes, Sir.”

“So, what are you worried about if you’ve got your money right for the ring?” Steven asked bewildered.

James couldn’t not smirk. It was so weird to see his Great-Uncle confused. “I’m just trying to keep my money right for the rest of the week. Quinn’s was already coming up to go with me to the KAMA concert. I have us reservations at Grace for before it and we’ll have a Premier Lakeview Suite at the Four Seasons from Friday night to Wednesday. But even with not having to buy our tickets for that night…I’m still coming up off at least five grand for the stuff I can plan ahead.”

Steve looked thoughtful. “That’s low balling it. I mean, you’re talking five to six days of meals and entertainment. Marjorie and I will have y’all and the family over for dinner Sunday night, but that still gives you like fifteen other meals. And you’re going to ask your woman to be your bride, you’ve gotta look good when you do. Tell you what, I’m gonna take you to Syd Jerome. My man there he’ll make you a custom suit. You can take off the tie for the concert and after party. You’re gonna have to step correct.”

“Thanks Uncle Steve. You sure you won’t take too much flack for me marrying a white girl?”

“Ahn…fuck ‘em. You love your girl and she loves you. She ain’t out for your paper or mine. She’s smart and working on having her own shit together. You’ve been together for a while and have been solid for years. Your Momma and Sisters like her so you’re all good as far as I’m concerned.” Steve assured his nephew. “Now, the concert isn’t until Tuesday…what you got planned for the weekend?”

The new suit and some brainstorming weren’t all that happened from that conversation. James cousins were soon brought into the loop. Junior and Tommy both chimed in with their ideas on how to make the proposal as special as possible. They were so emphatic about helping that James ended up being very grateful for the break from their assistance that was provided by the trip James had to make to New Haven to meet up with his roommates turned partners. They were due in their college city the last Friday of June to close on the seven bedroom, six and a half bath house they were buying just minutes from campus. Though, truth be told, James was also grateful for the time he got to spend with Quinn…he always happy for any time he got to spend in her presence. They talked a couple of times a day, but the weekends they got to spend together always seemed to end too soon.

As James flew to Dayton, where Quinn would meet him during his layover and they would fly the rest of the way to New Haven together, he let his thoughts take him back to through the long process of finding a house that the ten different personalities could agree on. They had started by taking Victor’s advice and sitting down together to make a list of must haves. Since there were so many of them, they decided that they would each only add one thing they couldn’t live without and leave spots for the things that were universal. Like the fact that they all wanted some place completely move-in ready. A place that had all the modern amenities, like updated wiring and plumbing and being wired for cable and internet. They wanted a place with at least five bedrooms and four bathrooms, not including any half baths. The kitchen had to be nice but also functional. They needed onsite laundry and the girls all swore that having it on the same floor as the bedrooms was the best idea ever. Though they could live with basement laundry, if they needed to, but none of them were willing to do garage laundry rooms. Those were never heated. James and Drew wanted dedicated computer space. They were fine with sharing it, but it was a necessity for them given their majors. Everyone agree that they needed a shared hangout space that could be a completely education free zone.

Ultimately they found a great house, less than five minutes from campus. It had seven bedrooms and six full bathrooms, including a master suite. The house was on a five acre lot and had been nicely renovated. Because it had been languishing on the market for a few months, the area schools weren’t as good as they were just a few streets away and it really was a family home, their group had been able to get what had been a million dollar listing for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They’d put down two hundred thousand dollars as a down payment on a ten year mortgage. That brought each of their responsibility for the mortgage, property taxes and home owner’s insurance to six hundred and seventy-five dollars a month. Together they agreed that they would each put in an additional two hundred and twenty-five dollars a month for utilities, common needs like laundry supplies, toilet paper and paper towels and groceries. Kat was happy that the monthly payments were affordable for her and even left her enough to maintain her car insurance and her car over all. She still felt badly that she’d only been able to scrape together five thousand herself to put in on the down payment and yet had an equal share in the future equity and rental income.

However, Kat had skills she knew her roommates didn’t all possess. She made them all agree that she would handle the grocery shopping and the cooking. It was actually a very easy sell. The only other person who was actually used to grocery shopping was James and he hated the activity. He, Victor, Max and Drew could all cook certain things…but none of them could make a whole meal. They did force Kat to allow them to help out as did Topanga and Taylor. Brad and Quinn had never even learned to make tea. It had been Kat to convince them that the remodeled kitchen of the house on Edgehill Road had been perfectly remodeled even if it hadn’t been done with any thoughts as to the current trends. There was an area that was big enough for a table and chairs for them all to eat in there so the large dining room with its walkout to the great back deck would become a ten-person study. The house had a large, completely finished basement that fit their needs for a ‘no school work’ gathering place. The bathrooms were all up dated and the house was bright and airy and open.

Once the house was officially theirs, the ten friends had an unfortunate realization. They still had to buy furniture. Deciding to put that thought to the side for a later time, Kat convinced her friends to let her and her family treat them to dinner. The drive wasn’t as bad as it could have been, taking just under an hour. The second they tasted the pizza at Mystic Pizza, they all sighed. James looked around and put words to all of their thoughts. “This pizza is worth every second of that drive. Kat-girl, you’ve been holding out.” He chided jokingly.

Kat just laughed. “I didn’t want to get you guys addicted. Have you dropping out because you’re too busy tearing up the road between New Haven and Mystic to make it to your classes.” She quipped back. She had pitched in getting their orders and drinks and delivering everything to the table, even though she had the day off. Finally finished serving the large group, she took her seat at the table and as they all dug in, the pragmatist that she was, she jumped right into the elephant in the corner. “Okay, we’ve got the house. We thought that we had planned for everything. But none of us thought about furniture. And on the way here, I thought about something else, we’ll need to get the kitchen all kitted out. We don’t have pots and pans or even dishes or silverware…well not really. I mean, we have some from the dorm…but not really.”

Taylor cosigned. “We’ll need things like shower curtains and bathmats and cleaning supplies.” She slumped in her chair. “I don’t know how much that kind of stuff costs, but I know that it adds up quick and if I tap into my college fund too much more, I’m not going to be able to make my part of the mortgage for the whole period of the loan.” She said honestly.

Topanga looked miserable, but she was in the same place. Brad was better off, but only because his scholarships included a stipend of fifteen hundred bucks a month. Quinn looked thoughtful. “Guys, give me a second.” She hissed as she whipped out her phone. The conversation that followed between Quinn and her father was a master class in WASP emotional manipulation. Without ever giving anyone at the table any clue as to why she was able to wheedle extra money out of her father, Quinn managed to get Russell Fabray to give her and her roommates fifteen thousand dollars to start the process of furnishing and outfitting their new domicile. Their celebration took on a much less somber tone with that information. They knew that they would not be able to afford to do the personal spaces, each person would bear the responsibility of furnishing and decorating their own space. James quickly told Quinn that he would take care of their shared bedroom.

That led to them remembering something else they’d put off, on purpose in that case. “Oh shoot…we said that since we didn’t want to jinx anything we’d decided rooms after the closing.” Max pointed out. “Since Que got us to money to get furniture…I say that she and James get the master bedroom.” that motion was very quickly seconded and passed. Though Quinn and James tried to defer…they really didn’t try all that hard. Besides as Max pointed out they were the only couple among them so it made the most sense for them to have that particular suite any way.

Brad spoke up. He didn’t talk a lot. to be honest, with all the talking his roommates and friends did, he had trouble getting a word in edgewise. So, when he made the effort to make his opinion heard, the other nine individuals made sure to pay attention. “I don’t mind sharing a room and if Max doesn’t mind either, I think we should be roommates. Our majors are similar enough that we share books and notes and it would just be easier.” He didn’t mention that he didn’t date because he was so much younger than most of the young women in his year and Max didn’t date because he was so very focused on his studies. The two of them sharing a room made a lot of sense.

Taylor pulled out her tablet and pulled up the floorplan of the house that she’d saved months ago. “Alright…I’d suggest that the Brad and Max…and whoever else is willing to pair up…they get the larger non-master bedrooms.” Everyone quickly agreed to that.

Kat raised her hand. “The bedrooms with the gables in the attic.” She began with a timidity no one was used to seeing from her. “I’d like one of those.”

Drew spoke without thinking. “Victor never brings girls back to his place…I never have a girl to bring back, Topanga, you and Cory could save a lot if you didn’t have to get a hotel room when he comes for a visit…same for you and your boyfriend, Taylor.” He honestly couldn’t remember Taylor’s boyfriend’s name. She and the first guy they had met, her high school boyfriend Chad, had broken up over the previous summer and her current boyfriend was a student at Dartmouth that she’d met doing Model UN. No one had really bothered to remember his name. Mainly because he was one of those people who seemed completely boring until he was comfortable with you. So only Taylor saw the memorable in him.

Victor looked thoughtful. “Well, the best excuse for going to their room or a hotel is always, my roommate is home. I am fine with sharing with Drew. Especially since he and James will have a completely separate computer den.”

Harrison smirked. “I’ll take the bedroom up top with Kat, then. It is a lovely room and there will be room for my easel.” It had taken the better part of the previous two school years for Harrison to become comfortable enough with his friends to let them know that he wasn’t just an Art History major…he actually painted himself.

The friends made more plans and were happily looking forward to the rest of their summers at home and the coming semester. James couldn’t wait for the last Tuesday in July. He was certain that it would go down as one of the best days of his entire life. Quinn had no clue what was coming…but she was certainly looking forward to five continuous nights with the man she loved.

Who Says (Selena Gomez)  
Ambient PoV  
New York, New York

Jesse St. James was having the best year of his life. He had gotten an incredible part in an Off-Broadway musical that had made it to the big time. It would start the preview performances in July and would open in August on Broadway. He was bringing home a little under seven thousand dollars a month after taxes. Which, admittedly would not have gone as far in New York as it would elsewhere, but after his reconciliation with his parents and their worry about him after the brutal attack on someone they sort of knew, his father was paying his rent on a functional and cute little studio apartment in the Chelsea area of Manhattan. It was far better than the loft in Queens he had shared with several other young, determined actors when he’d first moved to New York. With that major hurdle out of the way, Jesse was able to live quite a nice life. He took a gourmet cooking class that helped him to solve his constant eating out problem.

Though he did find himself often frequenting a restaurant near the Manhattan School of Music campus. He had met a young lady, a student at MSM, at Blujeen when one of his cast mates had dragged the entire cast to their favorite restaurant to celebrate the extension of their run to through to April. Christina Nghiem was simply beautiful. At fife foot one, and weighing only a hundred and five pounds, she was a tiny little thing. Her hair was raven wing black with blue and purple streaks the first time he saw her and she was dressed primarily in a black tennis skirt and black tank top with a purple plushy hand flipping a stuffed animal bird. She was sitting at a table next to them, reading an actual book. When their food arrived, Jesse reached for the pepper shaker near him only to get beaten to it and given a look that let him know that he’d be the last person at the table to use it. He shrugged it off, it was an established process in their case dinners. So, he asked her to borrow hers. When she spoke…her voice…it created a visceral reaction within him. “Here you go.” Three words and Jesse wanted to hear more. Before anyone could say a thing, he’d dusted his grilled salmon loin with the pepper and quickly stood and took a seat at her table.

Jesse didn’t care that his food got cold and he ended up getting the whole thing boxed up. He left there with her name and phone number. Over the next week they called and texted. It wasn’t until they had talked daily for a full week and a half that Jesse asked her for an official date. They had gotten to know each other very well. Jesse had learned that Christina’s grandfather was from a very wealthy Vietnamese family but had almost been disowned when he fell in love with and eloped with an American nurse during the Vietnam war. They had settled in London after the war. Her mother and father had met in a coffee house in Bayreuth, Bavaria, Germany when they were visiting Festspielhaus…opera’s Mecca. Her father worked for NPR and her mother for PBS. He learned that, like him, she had auditioned for Juilliard and not made it all the way through the week, though she’d made it a day farther than he had.

Christina was shocked to realize that Jesse was seeing a counselor because of the loss of his brother, in front of his eyes, when he was very young and the internalization of his parent’s guilt and grief. She learned that due to his own bravado and over-inflated ego, he’d washed out of the performing arts program at UCLA. It had surprised her because she never expected him to be so honest about his faults. Jesse told her of the day Shelby had saved his life. He told her about how hard he’d worked to replace bravado and arrogance with hard work and humility. He spoke of the gratitude he had for Shelby and Dr. Jones, a man who’d shown him a small kindness when he had no need to and every reason not to. “Uống nước nhớ nguồn”, she said gently. “It is one of my Grandfather’s favorite sayings. It means that ‘Gratitude is the sign of noble souls’. You’ve learned to be appreciative and honor the things others have done for you. It is a major step in growing up.”

“Well, I hope that the rest of the journey isn’t as painful as that first step. I’ve had some times where I thought that it would be so much easier to revert. But when I behaved that way…nothing great happened. I mean, yeah, I won some show choir competitions…but I’m guessing that I won those because of Shelby’s good karma, not my own. Now though, I’ve got a much improved…dare I say great…relationship with my parents. I’ve got my dream job, an amazing role in a musical that’s moving from Off-Broadway to very much on Broadway. I’m friendly with people who should still want to punch me in the face every time they see me. A connection which, I do not deserve, yet it has given me access to a gifted stylist, a great manager, an amazing contract attorney and a PR manager who are helping me to build my brand even more.”

“I still cannot believe how small this world really is. I mean, I told you how kind Kurt and Mercedes, Sam and Puck were to me at the auditions. They were really nice. I just can’t believe that you’ve known them for years.” She laughed.

Jesse loved her laugh. It was throaty and full bodied and just so real. It wasn’t a twitter or a giggle. It was an enticement to share in her amusement. “I fully believe it. After all, you know my deepest and darkest. You know that if Mercedes, Puck or Sam walked up to me and punched me in the face…I would be completely deserving of the physical violence. Instead they’ve attended both my park show and Hamilton. They’ve promoted my performances in both. It is maddeningly confusing. My grandmother simply says that I should be glad that they were raised well and have Christian values.”

“Maybe she is right. There has to be something that makes them do the things they do that no one expects or even understands. As competitive as the auditions for Juilliard are, why on earth were the five of them so ready to warm up with and be so kind to others. It made no sense. I even heard some of the TAs commenting on it. I, personally, think that it is a huge part of why they are so successful. Too often, we see those who behave badly getting all the success, all the accolades. Perhaps God realized that it was starting to negatively impact his brand.” She joked.

It actually struck a chord with Jesse, joke though it may have been. He noticed that Lin Manuel Miranda was also very much a spiritual man. He always tried to treat everyone with respect and practiced a lot of the same things Sam, Mercedes and Puck espoused, though he didn’t come out and say that he was any particular religion. “Are you religious?” He blurted without charm or delicacy. “I mean, do you go to church or temple or whatever. I’ve not stepped a foot inside a church since my brother’s funeral. We used to attend regularly and then we stopped.”

Christina understood exactly why his parents would have stopped. Who could blame them for being angry with God for taking away their child. “Mom was raised Episcopalian, but she converted in the early eighties. So, my family and I are all Buddhist.” She explained to him how that affected her views on the world and how the religion was practiced. They talked about meditation and how Confucianism and Taoism had become a very deep part of the basic tenets of Buddhism. That discussion led them into a discussion of Jesse’s understanding of his own spirituality and the religion that he’d been raised with. Over the course of the next several weeks, Jesse and Christina saw each other as much as their schedules would allow. Christina watched Jesse’s practice. Jesse watched Christina’s spring showcase performance where she dazzled the entire room with an amazing rendition of 'Sì, mi Chiamano Mimì’

They had brunch with Christina’s parents and grandparents when they all came to the city for a visit. And dinner with Jesse’s mother and father when they did the same. Before they realized it, they had been seeing each other for three months and felt very deeply about each other. It was with that realization in mind that Jesse decided to invite Christina to spend the night with him. The love making was all that Jesse had hoped and dreamed it would be. Christina was deeply in touch with who she was as a person, with her own wants, desires and needs. When they came together, she was able to communicate with him in a manner no other woman he’d ever slept with had before. And given how well they knew each other, how much they’d already shared before taking that step…Jesse found it beyond easy to include Christina in his own pursuit of pleasure. With that final compatibility assured, Jesse and Christina’s relationship started to move forward apace.

Yes, Jesse St. James had grown and matured. He had become a worthy mate for a very good young woman. He’d gained a role that would make his career. He lived in a lovely apartment and had learned the value of hard work and saving for the future. He couldn’t wait to see what else life had in store.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I personally recommend Todrick Hall's Defying Gravity & Straight Outta OZ  
> Some of the best music I'm currently listening to.   
> Those & the Dream Girls (West End Production) Sound Tracks.  
> Drop me a comment and tell me who you are listening to.   
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	3. Critical Response, Suitcase (Dara Maclean) & Truckin' (Grateful Dead)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to the tour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.

Chapter 3

Critical Response to Concert

SPIN  
REVIEW: KAMA’s First Headline Tour, a Marathon of a Good Time.  
Katherine Camp

When you hear that a concert lasted from seven o’clock in the evening to half past twelve in the morning, one would probably expect a festival type night where there are six or seven acts spread over the evening. That was not the case at the first concert of music’s over-night success story, KAMA. Saturday night, I attended the opening night of their North American Tour, Aesthetic Enjoyment. The night opened with Alessia Cara. A YouTube discovery who is gaining notice for her musical composition and lyrical content. She had a forty-five-minute set after which there was a fifteen-minute intermission followed by the beginning of KAMA’s set. We were treated to an hour of straight KAMA. It was one of the best hours of my concert going life. The music was as mixed and varied as the three people who make up the group.

KAMA offered us every song that they have thus far released from the SongBird Soundtrack where they broke onto the music scene to their newest, critically acclaimed and platinum selling album, Foolish Wisdom. They divided the forty-five songs between three hour long sets and a half-hour encore. The audience was also treated to four covers. The first of these was led by Puck and dedicated to his lifelong friend Finn Hudson who was almost killed in a 2014 car accident. Darius Rucker’s ‘I Hope They Get to Me in Time’ was given a rock treatment that though unexpected was never the less powerful and well done. A thirty-minute spin session by KAMA’s resident beats mistress and DJ, DJ Ca$$, that made more well-known spinners jaws hit the floor in shock and awe. It was easy to see that she was heavily influenced by go-go and hip-hop, and yet she showcased rock and soul as well. The next KAMA set was even better than the first. Several of their more raucous numbers found their way into the second KAMA set of the night. The KAMA dancers proved their worth in not only being able to keep up no matter how fast the song was, but in their ability to transition between any of the differing songs. That adaptability and fluidity was never more visible than in the seamless move between the fast, fun and defiant ‘Hell to the No’ and the warmer, slower, loving ‘Believe’. Another thirty minutes of DJ CA$$ was more of a treat than a break. The third set from the headliners will be the set that sees the most possible controversy. Both of their political message songs were in the final set. The entire stage crew donned blindingly white silk choir robes as the group paid respect to two young black men whose young lives, lived half a century apart, were both cut short by hatred, fear and, yes, stupidity. Cell phones with lighters on their screens filled the ballroom. More than one person had tears in their eyes. The next two songs, while rich with melody and the dramatic lyrical content one has come to expect from the group’s love songs, did nothing to brighten the mood. But then, Sam Evans treated the audience to a lyrical cover of 50 Cents’ ‘Just a Lil Bit’. The former, kind of smarmy, rap song was totally turned around and made into something of a love song to KAMA’s songstress. A very fun, slightly dirty love song that definitely brought the mood back up. It must also be noted that his ‘husband and wife’ joined the dancers in a way they hadn’t for his other solos. Ms. Jones showed off twerking skills that Miley Cyrus could only dream of emulating. The set ended with the critically adored ‘Rescue Me’ remix with English actor and rapper Idris Elba, which can be found as a bonus track on KAMA’s sophomore album, Foolish Wisdom.

It was only as we were screaming for an encore that I realized exactly how long the show had already lasted. I called for the encore anyway. We asked and we definitely received. The encore contained the more sensual songs of KAMA’s catalogue. It was only after the end of their last song of the night, ‘Rub You the Right Way’ that many of the audience realized that we’d been standing, swaying and dancing for the better part of five and a half hours. Of course, that necessitated a major retreat to the restrooms once we were sure that KAMA nor DJ Ca$$ would be making another appearance. In the line for the ladies, I made a startling discovery, not only was there not a single person upset at the cost of the price of admission, but, as so often happened after a concert, they weren’t merely discussing the vocals or the live music…this time they were also discussing their favorite outfits and pairs of shoes.

Right before KAMA took the stage a short slide show that showed how fashion forward Mercedes Jones, Sam Evans and Noah Puckerman have been since the moment they broke on the scene. The final slide stated that KAMA would marry fashion and music in a way not seen before. And they kept their word. Mercedes Jones wore custom outfits from Alexander McQueen and Gucci, La Petite Robe di Chiara Boni, and Moschino and Rag&Bone. Her shoes were Steve Madden, Prada and Louboutins. Sam and Puck wore branded fashion as well. But nowhere did one see the almost inevitable metallic mini with all-over fringe or embellished white leotard with curtain skirt or bedazzled red cutout leotard. That was a fact very much appreciated by this writer and most of the women who attended the show. It was a night of depth and joy, of fashion and music and entertainment. Aesthetic Enjoyment was shared by all.

Final Grades for KAMA’s Aesthetic Enjoyment Tour

Overall Experience: 5 Stars (The concert gave everyone a positive experience. There was more than enough bang for your buck, monetarily. The crowd had nothing but positive things to say as they were exiting the venue. Each person felt like they had made an emotional connection with the members of KAMA. The music, dancing and wardrobe were all on point.)

Opening Act: 4 Stars (Cara was good, but rather static. The experience her time on this tour will provide can only help her grow.)

Middle Card Act: 5 Stars (DJ Ca$$ did an amazing job. Her spin-man-ship was on point. Her mix was great and she kept things jumping every time she took the stage.)

Music: 4.5 Stars (Its really nick-picky but a few of the songs went on a little too long. Mercedes Jones is an amazing songstress, but anyone who has even visited a black church can tell you that sometimes the choir can get carried away.)

Stage Show: 5.5 Stars (Twelve dancers, not a single one was out of step the entire time. At no point did they upstage the group. Six background singers, they followed Mercedes Jones where ever she decided to take them and they backed up Sam Evans and Noah Puckerman just as well. Not one time did any of them over sing the main artists. Five-piece band, when Sam, Puck or both decided to join the band with their own guitars. Artie Abrams, Justin Alexander, Dave Briggs, and Erika Chance proved that they were a well-oiled machine. There wasn’t a lot of pyrotechnics, relying instead on video and the music itself to ensnare the audience and keep their attention. Bonus points for the emotional moment of caring and love shared by Puck right before the encore. I hope their friend’s transition surgery went well.)

Fashion: 4 Stars (I’ve never before rated this category in a concert review but in this case, I must. Mercedes Jones and the female background singers, dancers, Erika Chance and DJ Ca$$ earned 5 stars. Sam, Puck and the guys through no fault of their own…men’s fashion is pretty boring… earned 3 Stars.)

* * * * *

Rolling Stones   
KAMA Kicks off North American Tour with a Spectacle of Fashion & Music  
Shawn Matthews

KAMA took the stage and there was not a butt in a seat in the whole ballroom. It was not that the concert had no one in attendance, it was simply that every single person was on their feet. When Mercedes Jones, Sam Evans and Puck Puckerman took the stage, they were met with a roar of approval that made a somewhat normal moment take on a life of its own. Mercedes greeted the crowd by simply thanking them for coming and asking if they were feeling good. While she didn’t scream, every person in the audience was left with the feeling that she could have made herself heard all through the venue without a microphone. The excitement in the thirty-five hundred capacity ballroom was like a feedback loop, the crowd’s excitement fed the band’s and the band’s excitement fed the crowd’s. The concert opened with a small pyro display as the video screens around the room played the ‘Rescue Me’ video with the band and KAMA gifting us all with a live rendition of the song that was powerful enough to bring down the house. From the beginning to the end, there was a sort of synergy between the music supergroup and their fans.

As many concerts as this journalist has attended, KAMA’s was truly unique. The first of many differences from the usual concert experience one noticed when attending the KAMA concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom, was the ‘Swag Shak’. A KAMA purple and silver kiosk that offered autographed merch complete with Certificates of Authenticity that validated the extra cost between the prices at the ‘Swag Shak’ and the other merch sale booths on the way into the concert hall. The ‘Swag Shak’ was a small two-person operation that was run by KAMA staff and offering everything from posters, CDs and tees to tote bags and backpacks all bearing verified autographs of Mercedes, Sam and Puck. During the first intermission, when DJ Ca$$ spun for the gold, the line for the ‘Swag Shak’ was longer than that for the restrooms. Primarily because everyone was willing to force their bladders into abeyance in order to get their autographed merch and back to their seats in time to hear what the DJ was spinning. By the end of the second of DJ Ca$$’s thirty minute, not only was the ‘Swag Shak’ breaking down having sold out, so too were almost all of the regular merch vendors.

The second difference was that the headliner went on immediately after the opening act. KAMA utilized their in-house DJ, billed as their mid card act, in a new and innovative way. Rather than DJ Ca$$ having one long set before they launched their part of the concert, she had two shorter sets that broke up the, almost ridiculously, long set of the headliner. Seriously, between the opening act, DJ Ca$$ and KAMA there was about five hours of straight music. If it hadn’t been all three and a half to five-star music that could have been torturous. Instead, everyone left the ballroom feeling as if the seventy-five to a hundred and fifty dollars they spent for their tickets was more of a buy one get two free deal of the century. The money was paid for KAMA who delivered in spades. Mercedes Jones’ vocals were out of this world. Sam Evan’s country rock vocals held their own and enlivened hers and Puck’s rock chops. Puck didn’t have to sing a word. His guitar solo on ‘The Fighter’ was epic enough that it showed his vocals were actually his secondary talent. The trio backed by their band, singers and dancers gave us an experience worth every single dollar spent on the ticket. So while KAMA was the main draw, they were not the only ones to take the stage. Alessia Cara was better than anyone could have expected, easily a young Joni Mitchell influenced by Nina Simone and Ani DiFranco in the making. Her lyrical composition was amazing given her youth. DJ Ca$$ blended influences of Missy Elliot, Dr. Dre and Timbaland with EDM, Go-Go and Dub-Step to bring forth something new and innovative.

There were no pyro displays that include forty-foot flames that turn into fireballs and fireworks galore. There were no huge mylar balloons floating above the stage…No glow in the dark, black light lit costumes or indoor snow storms. Despite the lack of the usual opulence and spectacle of modern pop and rock concerts, no one felt like anything was missing. The pyro that was used was smaller and more intimate. A sentiment that seemed to encapsulate the entire experience. The concert was intimate. A feeling that was cemented when Puck spoke to the audience before the encore and shared a deeply personal moment with the entire assembly. In a moment of true caring, he showed those in the audience, several of whom had firsthand knowledge of the journey his friend is current undertaking, that KAMA’s views on inclusion and acceptance were not just lip service. They live them every day. The concert ended with Sam Evans taking center stage and thanking us all for coming out. “Love yourselves and take care of each other. There is UBER and Lyft and taxies and the trains, no excuse for anyone to get behind the wheel of a car if you’ve been drinking. Remember, drunk driving is the ultimate dick move.” he admonished. The true wonder of the KAMA concert was that by the end we all felt less like an audience and more like thirty-five hundred people who shared a mutual friend but were only now meeting each other for the first time. In fact, I met a couple who live in my building. Before the concert I’d seen them a million times without even bothering to learn their names. After the concert, Damien, Sanjar and I had brunch together the morning after the concert to compare notes and flesh out information for this article. KAMA’s concerts aren’t just a musical experience…they are a KAMA-unity builder.

Set List: All 45 Songs in the KAMA Catalogue   
Plus covers of the following:  
Darius Rucker’s ‘I Hope They Get to Me in Time’ (Puck)  
Garth Brooks’ ‘The River’ (Mercedes)  
50 Cents’ ‘Just A Lil Bit’ (Sam)  
Janet Jackson’s ‘Anytime Any Place’ (Mercedes)

 

NME

KAMA – Aesthetic Enjoyment Review  
Milton James

It takes a miracle to make hardened New Yorkers respond to a concert by acting like smitten teenagers with their first celebrity crush…but KAMA managed just that with the opening night of their North American tour. The group treated their KAMA-leons to every one of their hits and all the music from their debut and sophomore albums. The show was amazing, not relying on tricks or spectacle, but on the purity of music and dance and the arts…on pure, unadulterated talent. The beautiful melding of the three primary voices was supported by their six background singers and the artistry of their twelve background dancers led by world famous Rainbow Razalan. It was augmented with pops of pyrotechnics and showcases of music videos and candid videos of the group and crew. But the main thrust of the night, from opening act to encore was all about music-love. Not just love of music, but using music to express love and emotions…to make connections and build community.

The entire night was long…five hours of music…but it felt like it was begun and over in moments. The fashion, for it was fashion, not costuming, was beautiful and showcased the beauty of the fourteen different women on the stage. Whether by design or a happy accident, KAMA gave proof to their many media assertions that all women are beautiful no matter their shape or size. Granted, it did help that no matter how you sliced it every one of those very different women was gorgeous in her own way. Music, dance, art, fashion, KAMA gave their ticket buyers a true evening of Aesthetic Enjoyment worth its weight in gold…platinum…and diamond.

Suitcases (Dara Maclean)  
Ambient PoV  
New York, New York

Will Schuester really felt that, despite the fact that he was working in a far less than reputable avenue of employment, his life wasn’t going so badly. He had enough regular clients that he could live a nice life without having to rely on the women who might seek those type of services once or twice a year. Though his job and his less than frequent customers did allow Will to afford the luxuries of living in New York. Coffee he didn’t make every morning, a subscription to the New York Times and The New Yorker, and taxis to get where he needed to be, rather than having to take the trains and buses everywhere. For the most part, he was able to attend the theater whenever he wanted. Many of his regular clients didn’t hire him for the more salacious aspects of his job. They simply enjoyed having a knowledgeable companion to attend the theater, opera and symphony with who actually enjoyed attending and stayed awake for the entire production. While Will got along well with all twenty of his regular clients, he did have a favorite. She was the most unassuming and physically plain of all his clients, though she was also the most independently affluent and terrifying of the all. Daphne March was a senior VP in a major corporation. She was also a great fan of Will’s former students.

Will had done something ill-advised for someone in his position. He had grown to care deeply for one of his clients. Daphne was more than a client, she was someone he considered a friend. So, he decided to treat her to something special on their second quarter date. He had splurged and gotten them floor seats, very near the front row at the Barclays Center, complete with an unexpected VIP backstage pass upgrade. He’d been very surprised that he could afford those. What he didn’t know, and never would be told, was that his purchase had actually triggered a system alert and he was upgraded to the VIP passes for his two tickets. It would only apply to the first two tickets he ordered. Had he not apologized and been forgiven; the alert would have only been triggered for that one concert. But since he’d been pardoned by Commune, he would have the upgrade for life. Of course, the groups other mentors, Sue Sylvester, Shannon Beiste, Emma Pillsbury and Shelby Cochran would never have to pay a dime for their tickets or backstage passes…but Schue wasn’t them.

Schue and his companion absolutely loved the concert. It still shocked him how wonderful the trio sounded together. He never thought that blending those voices could ever be as amazing as it was. But it wasn’t just the songs where their voices mingled that showed Schuester how foolish he had been. Every time Mercedes had a song alone, the audience went wild in response. Daphne loved the whole experience, but she was taken aback by how awe inspiring the clothing was. “That Kimono covered slip dress look was just gorgeous. It was intimate without being revealing, vintage and yet on trend and even fashion forward.” She cooed. “And oh my gosh, can you believe how white those robes were at the beginning of those honorarium songs? Both were so very heart wrenching. You know, KAMA inspired me to add Black Lives Matter to my charitable giving.” She said happily as they made their way backstage.

The duo was at the front of a group of pass holders being escorted by a large guy with military bearing dressed in all black. As they moved along the halls, he informed the group that there was no need to rush, “KAMA likes to have at least an hour after the show to get cleaned up and presentable.” He gave them the excuse all Rangemen had been briefed on for why the three stars weren’t immediately available to greet the VIPs. It did sound a lot better than, ‘they get really horny when they are performing, so we have to give them time to get their fuck on before we can take anyone to the dressing room. So rather than taking the group immediately backstage, he led them through the lobby and past the few vendors that still had merch for sale. Daphne was able to pick up a few everyday wear things that she’s not been able to get at the Swag Shak.

When they were finally able to get into the dressing room, Will introduced her to his former students with a smile. “Mercedes Jones, Sam Evans, and Noah Puckerman. Guys, this is my good friend Daphne.” He certainly wasn’t going to tell the kids that Daphne was client as he was two steps above a common rent boy. “She is a very-very big fan.” He told them with a smile. He turned to Mercedes and spoke with sincerity and honesty. “It is good to finally be able to say face to face, I was wrong. You were every bit as good as Rachel, probably even better because tonight, you sang songs from every genre…every single one and they were all amazing. I have to say though…I never thought that I would hear Mercedes Jones doing a Reba McEntire Cover. Was that Sam’s influence or did I just miss that much?”

“A little bit of both. Being a part of KAMA has given me the chance to sing songs in public that I’d never have admitted listening to at all back in high school. But I have always listened to and loved Reba, Garth, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. Just like I’ve listened to Creed and Nickelback and some other alternative rock artists since before I really got to know Puck.” She told him with a smile. “We understand and appreciate you wanting to apologize face to face and we respect and appreciate your words.”

Puck laughed. “Yeah, we’re glad that you got your head out of Berry’s tight ass.”

Schue accepted Puck’s unique way of saying that they forgave him. “How is Rachel doing? Antwan Berry pretty much hates me as much as your father probably does, Mercedes. He and Hiram haven’t taken my calls or returned my emails since before they returned to Lima.”

Sam answered the curly haired man, understanding his hesitation in asking and Antwan’s anger. “Shelby saw her Saturday. She said that Rachel was up, walking and talking when she visited. But her fathers said that she was still having some problems with long term walking or standing.”

“Does that mean that she won’t be able to dance again?” Schue was aghast.

The three of them shrugged. It was an unknown variable. Antwan and Hiram were both really worried that Rachel would lose her fingertip hold on sanity all together if that was the case. The conversation turned to more pleasant topics for the last few minutes that KAMA could afford to give Schue and his friend. That night, Daphne paid Schue’s rent and rocked his world. She had never before felt so passionate or commanding. The career woman would never say aloud that she’d never before been as aroused as she was after attending the concert and seeing the performance of one of her all-time favorite groups and meeting them live and in person. The fact that they treated her so warmly and even hugged her goodbye had awoken within her a passionate animal that was barely quenched in the following twelve hours.

The next day as he was returning to his apartment, Schuester sent up a prayer to a God that he barely believed in. he asked for the continued health and success of all his former students and that of his newest friend. He also said a special prayer for the young woman he considered a talent and a protégé. Though he knew that he’d done all the kids in the New Directions a disservice with his favoritism and blindness, Will could not help but hope and pray that she would be dancing on a Broadway stage before he knew it.

Truckin’ (Grateful Dead)  
Tessa PoV

A person can read every blog on the subject. Study all the rock star biographies. Ask anyone they want who might have some experience in the arena…but they all agreed that there was just no way to even begin to understand what touring was really like until you’d actually gone on a tour. I was nervous and excited at the same time when I woke up Monday morning. Joe and I both were bundles of nervous energy. We woke up early and showered and went back through our ‘checklist’, which may have come from one of those ‘things to make sure you have for the tour buses’ list on one of those indie rocker blogs. We each had two extra battery packs for our phones. Extra chargers for everything. I’d gotten us a membership at a twenty-four-hour gym…not so much for exercise, but for showers on demand. I didn’t think it would be an issue, but there was one near my house, my house…I had a house…anyway. There was one near our house in Iowa City too, so even if we didn’t use the membership over the summer, it would definitely be used over the course of the school year. After we completed our morning absolutions, we repacked our toiletries, I left out the razor I’d packed thinking that I’d need it near the end of June when it would have been time for me to hit Jewels. But I’d had just enough regrowth that I’d been able to get a fresh wax at Faina.

We each had a multi-vitamin and an immune booster and our, tech filled, backpacks were the rolling kind. They would act as our overnight bags for hotels and whatever. I had my iPad filled with new books, including the ones I had to read for my first semester classes. I also had my lucky Nook filled with all my favorite fiction and nonfiction books. We’d downloaded Waze on all our devises and we’d made sure that we had and unlimited data plan hotspot with us for when we were in the transport van. We put everything together and made sure that all our dirty clothes and towels and everything we were leaving for Patrick to wash and either put away or hold for our return were in the hamper in our guest bathroom then we headed down to see if anyone else was up.

Yeah, it turned out that everyone was up. Brittany met us on the stairs with some interesting news. Commune had to head to the office early because there was some paper work they needed to do. They were purchasing the floor above their current offices to house their secret real estate management company. Apparently, my brother and his honeys were becoming moguls behind the world’s back…which was ridiculously cool. Santana, Artie, Brittany and everyone else had already got their things ready to go and down to the living room. Though, like us, no one had very much stuff. Bubbie had come over to gather Nikki after a last breakfast with her parents. Manny and his partner Zip were there too since Nikki and Bubbie might want them later that day or something. Just as we were sitting down to a huge breakfast, Saul, Mills, Amanda, EJ and Avery showed up. There was more than enough food. It was a whole thing that Viola cooked like crazy whenever her bosses had company. Since everyone was ready to go, and Nikki really wasn’t ready to say goodbye anyway, we all headed to the office with Noah, Cede and Sam who had to be there an hour and half before everyone else. Viola gave Artie one of those collapsible coolers with a long strap. “There are fresh made granola and breakfast bars in there, enough to for all of the buses for two weeks. They won’t last any longer than that without preservatives. Refrigerate them, and they should be just the thing to give everyone a healthy start.” She admonished.

He agreed, there were hugs all around…and then we headed to the office. We took the subway. I was deliriously happy. It made no sense how much I missed traveling the city like a normal person considering how badly those trains could stink…but I had. When we got to the offices, Commune was immediately dragged in to Ethan’s office for their paperwork. Several of the rest of us decided to wait in the conference room until others showed up. Tana talked Brittany, Tina and I into going out to the garage where the buses were waiting so we could get first dibs on the bunks. None of us reminded her that we’d already picked our bunks on Friday. Sitting in the conference room seemed a little boring. Even if Darcy was putting them to work helping her with her daily KAMA mention searches. Besides Yasmine said that Hudson was out there.

We found Hudson looking as harried as any one of us could ever remember seeing her. “Thank God you’re here.” She said as soon as she saw us. “I need a little help. Sam, Mercy and Noah wanted everyone to have a surprise waiting on them when they loaded the buses today. But they didn’t all come in until Friday. Now…Patrick was an angel and he got them all washed and…they smell amazing. He and Bautista even wrapped them into cute little rolls with ribbons around them and tags with all of our names on them. Can you help me get them into the bunks.” She had lists of which bunk on each buss had been claimed by which person and everything.

“Not a problem.” We all assured her. In no time at all the five of us had done all the buses. It wasn’t hard, there were a total of seven buses for us to do. Hudson handled KAMA’s, Tana took our bus, Brittany and I did the guys and then we both helped Tina and Tana do the girls buses. All of us took on the three WMG buses that the tour crew would ride in, they were the hardest, but still fairly easy. Lamar had labeled each bunk at some point. A quick call to Manny, and Roger King, one of the Rangeman drivers, appeared and he took care of the Rangeman bus. None of the non Rangeman people could go on their bus. They were, according to Daniel, carrying enough firepower on there to take over an industrialized country…so, no unauthorized personnel. When we finished, I went over and checked out the Swag Van…not to be confused with the ‘Swag Shak’ which the Swag Van transported.

Leaning against the side of the van I couldn’t help but think about the whole set-up part of our job. Darcy had actually helped us at the Hammerstein and she said she would do it again at the Barclay center that night, but we’d be on our own once we left the city. She would help out when she joined the crew on the road, but for the most part it was up to me and Joe and whichever of the roadies Lamar sent to help us at that particular venue. The kiosk itself had actually gone up pretty easily. The interior main body of it was twenty feet by ten feet and was seven feet tall. There were no screws or nails, just this wicked cool adjustable strap system that acted as hinges for the three walls. Then once they were together, the shelves just had to be pulled up and locked into place. The whole thing was then covered by a weather proof, KAMA purple tent thing with silver accents and lettering.

That part went up pretty quickly. But Darcy said that she wanted us to come up with a ‘store plan’ that worked best for us. So, we would know where things worked best in the field and could do what worked best for us. That took longer. Some things were no brainers, the thicker things, like the folded-up hoodies, went on the wider deeper shelves and the posters went into the grid like shelves. Once we had everything in its place in a way that made sense and would be easily remembered, though I did ask Darcy if she could hook us up with a really good label maker. We could label the shelves and make our lives much easier. She had that and the big ass Tupperware containers Joe and I needed so we would not have to keep redressing the display forms with the tanks, tees and hoodies every single night. That took a ridiculously long time. But we did manage to get everything in place with enough time before the venue opened the doors to go and get quick showers in the crew’s locker room. Then we put on our uniforms and headed back to the kiosk and set up our ‘cash register’.

The uniforms were all the same, denim, khaki or black shorts along with one of several tee shirts in one of several different styles that all read ‘Official Licensed KAMA Swag Dealer’. We had twenty-one shirts each provided by Darcy-slash-Commune. The shirts were all either KAMA purple, silver or black with writing in one of the other colors depending on what would show up best. The first night I’d worn black sandals, but I knew that for all the rest, my sneaks would definitely be my footwear of choice. From the moment the first fans hit the doors, we had steady business. Then the word got around that we were not only licensed merch…but our stuff was autographed and came with authenticity certification. Then we got seriously deluged. Every parent there brought whatever their kids wanted. One Mom thanked us profusely. “Thank you so much. I just knew I was going to end up stuck here half the night while my son wandered around backstage trying to get an autograph.”

“Our bosses thought of that. They don’t like the idea of fans waiting in the dark in the hopes of getting an autograph that they never get.” I told her honestly.

She wasn’t the only parent there that night to voice the sentiment, but she was the most memorable. Not only was she the only one there with an Eastern European accent, but she was the only one there who brought over six grand worth of swag and used a prepaid Amex card to do so. It struck me that anyone who could drop that much for band merch should probably have a real credit card. But it went through on my Verifone VX, and it wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t have the money, so I tucked it away with interesting info that could be utilized for a character in a future short story or novel and went to help the next customer. By half way through Cassidy’s second set, we could hear the music through the ballroom’s sound system in the outer atriums, we were completely sold out of everything. So we broke down the kiosk and set up the easel and big ass sign telling people to go to the KAMA site for more merch. Darcy was very, very firm about one thing. The stock for each venue basically boiled down to three percent of the number of seats. One hundred and five of each item we were selling at the Hammerstein, no more. The least expensive of which were the posters which went for ten bucks a pop, the most expensive was the hoodies and the backpacks at seventy-five bucks each…we still sold out of everything like two hours before the end of the concert.

Joe and I had talked with Darcy, we definitely needed a better way to get just what we needed from the Nissan Transit Thirty-Five Hundred into the venue. So, that Monday, when we took control of the Transit for the rest of the summer, we found two big-ass rolling steamer trunks that we’d be able to use in addition to the hand truck that would carry the kiosk components into every venue. While we were waiting on everyone to arrive, Darcy, Joe and I counted out five hundred and fifty of everything, thank God for vacuum sealed bags that all the bigger items were packaged in, into the steamer trunks and the posters went into a large duffle bag that we could fasten to the top of one of the trunks. We’d be able to move faster at the Barclay center which was good because it was like six times bigger than the Hammerstein. By the time we finished doing that, Xena and the Dam Bros had arrived and stowed the last of their things. They were the first to get there other than those who’d come down from Harlem with Commune. But once they arrived, at a quarter of eleven, pretty much everyone else started showing up. Cassidy and Erika were next with Dave. Each of them had just a little practice thing, a drum board for Dave, a well-loved bass for Erika and a digital turntable for Cassidy. Justin strolled in with all his practice instruments…all six of them. He decided that he would store them under the bus and get one per day to practice with.

Then Sugar arrived. That girl made me smile so hard just by being her own wild and crazy self. Soon as she stored her stuff, more than anyone else other than Justin, by the way, she came running down off the bus with her purple fleece blanket unrolled and over her arm and a pretty sleep mask that was thick and black and had SUGAR stitched across it in pretty, silver, cursive embroidery. “Tessa, have you seen these, yet. I swear Mamma-Mercy and Sam and Puck are just too sweet. My cousin Raymoud, he’s a promoter. He didn’t want me to go on tour…he said that the musicians he knows treats their crews like shit. But Daddy told him that our friends weren’t like that. Please, we all know that Mercedes is the best person, like ever. He didn’t really believe Daddy or Sue, but I’m not his kid so all he could do was grumble. So, I just sent him a picture of me with these and asked him if any of the musicians he knew had done anything like this for their peoples.” She said smugly. 

We just shared a laugh. Of course, she flitted off to go flirt a little with some of the guys. It wasn’t serious flirting. She and Rory were killing the long-distance-relationship Olympics. Still, Sugar loved being admired. And guy loved admiring her, so it was really a win-win situation. Plus, it was relatively safe. Even when she went over to meet the tour crew. Az and Dave materialized to loom over her shoulders aggressively. Saying without actually speaking that Sugar Motta was off limits to them. I later heard from the Roadie, Stan, who was our helper that stop, that Az and Dave had warned them all that Sugar’s father was Italian Mafia…so no one with any sense was going to bother her. I was pretty sure he was fishing for confirmation, and since it would only help to keep her safer I told him solemnly, “Not just Italian…Egyptian too. You know the Egyptian mob is worse than the Irish…not quite as crazy as the Russians, but still pretty damn fucked up.”

“Wow, for real. I heard that the Egyptian mob was really hard core because they will break out that old school mummy shit.” Stan muttered quietly.

“Mr. Motta likes me, so I plan to never have to find out.” I said honestly. And I told myself to remember that line to share with Sugar for him. Mr. Motta loved all the stereotypes people had for his family and their associates.

The Barclay Center was an epic venue. It was in Brooklyn, so when the buses were fully loaded and the thirty minutes of goodbyes were said; Nikki, EJ and Avery were just too cute to leave, okay; we drove the hour that it took to go eight miles during lunch time in Chelsea, Manhattan and Brooklyn. Load in went well. While the Roadies were working their magic making sure that the stage was set, Noah, Cede and Sam did a quick rehearsal on the practice court. Once those were accomplished, we were joined by Stan and the ‘Swag Shak’ went up and was stocked with the swag. We had some prime real estate in the GEICO Atrium. The views were truly beautiful. By the time we were done, the sound and lighting checks were completed and everyone, Joe and I included hit the showers. The showers in the Barclay Center were, quite honestly top notch. I’m sure that the headliners had their own showers in the dressing rooms, but the rest of us peons showered off the sweat and dust of set up in the Nets and their cheerleaders’ locker rooms. There were fourteen ladies, from Tana, Tina and Xena to the dancers and lowly little me and the Brooklynettes are a squad of twenty, so there was plenty of room for us all to do our do. Had the showers needed to be staggered, Marceau, Bae-Be and JaJa would have gone first, followed by the background singers, then the rest of the dancers. The black dancers didn’t go first for the reason I’d originally assumed. I’d thought it was because they were like Cede and Moms D and nice-nasty…but the truth was that if they had to wash their hair it took longer to do. That was the real reason Tana, Tina and Xena went next, because it took so long for Xena’s hair to get done. She was considering cutting it, but since no one minded its length…her curls were ridiculously gorgeous…she hadn’t made that commitment yet.

Load in had started at a quarter after one. By a quarter of four, we were all showered and dressed, or in the process of dressing. Lunch was provided for the crew by the promoter and since Joe and I were considered crew, we were able to eat for free. It was really, kind of crazy how healthy it was. But Stan explained that eating healthy on a tour made sense. “Getting food poisoning on a tour bus is just not a thing anyone wants to have happen to them, or even anybody they know…no one should have to go through it. I’m pretty sure that it is a punishment in hell.” He said seriously.

By five, which was still two hours before the show started, though only one before the doors would open, Joe and I were completely ready. We made a final run to the Transit and grabbed the ‘cash register’ from the hidden safe it lived in and with it and our credit card machines fully charged and ready to go, we were ready when Darcy arrived dressed to the nines and ready to help. “Well, damn, you guys are golden. Here is the label maker. Let me know if you need extra labeling tape. I got you the rainbow pack in case you wanted to color code the categories.” She passed us the Dymo handheld label maker and spent a few minutes helping us label the shelves the way we wanted them. “So answer me honestly, you guys feel comfortable with this. We can get you some help if you need it. Some of the part timers are willing to provide regional backup for you guys if you need extra hands.”

Joe and I exchanged a long look. “To be honest, a third would be golden. I mean, it was manageable with the lines last night. But this place is a whole hell of a lot bigger.” I admitted.

Joe cosigned, “my only hesitation is that Tessa and I, we love Mamma-Cedes, Sam and Puck. We know we would never cheat them or steal from them. How do we guarantee that the other people feel the same way?”

Darcy took him seriously. “I will have Lester and his peeps vet anyone I put up to help you guys out rigorously.”

We agreed with that. As she was firing off an email to Commune and Hudson, to get the okay on adding an additional minimum wage position to the roster, I checked out her outfit. She was rocking some seriously tight, dark wash, skinny jeans and a fitted Jack Daniels tee under a black military look blazer. Her moto boots were really fierce and her makeup was on point. “Wow, Darcy, you’re looking really hot tonight. What’s up?”

She looked up half a second. “Oh, Ranger got his hands on one of the boxes for the evening, so Lester, him, Steph and a bunch of the guys are coming up. Gots to look nice enough to make his peeps drool, but not look all trashy or whatever.”

“Well, you met your goals.” I assured her.

“Thanks,” she smiled. “Alright, Hudson says that I can go ahead, but Cedes and her boys say that I’d better make sure that whoever we get is on the up and up and doesn’t end up causing drama and trauma.”

“Amen to that.” I replied. When the gates opened Darcy gave us a hand with crowd and line management, even taking one of the credit card readers and selling the swag down the line. But then Lester, Ranger Manoso, Stephanie Plum and a big black dude that could only be the Tank guy Sam had told us all about. There were a few other guys with them, and two of them stayed back to take over crowd control while Lester whisked Darcy off to the box they had for the evening. The setup at the Barclays Center was different. They didn’t have pipe the concert into the atrium, but our view down into the arena let us know how the evening was progressing. I noticed that Alessia had stepped up her game looks wise. She was still dressed like her, rocking a pair of cool, kind of funky boot cut pants, and a great tee-shirt, with a jacket over it, but her hair was did. Probably Dee didn’t give her a choice if there was time before Cede needed her.

The show was really cool. What I could peep, anyway. It was slightly shorter than the previous one. The first set was cut down to twelve songs. The covers they picked to do were different. They changed up the placement of a few other. The sad, message songs started off the second set so they came out in the flowing white robes. That was beautiful. It really was. Cassidy was on fire. She made everyone in that arena dance their asses off. Then again, so did KAMA, it just wasn’t straight fast songs, there had their slow grind songs and their looking deep into each other’s eyes and just sway kind of songs. We managed not to sell out quite as fast. We didn’t sell out until a few songs into the final official final set. By the end of the set we’d completed our money counts and readied our deposit. However, we were broken down by the end of the encore. The regular merch vendors still had plenty of stuff…but they had prepaid for all their stuff and had decided how much they wanted to sell. So, their deal was a little bit different than ours. They would be selling until they sold out even if that meant that they ended up standing outside at the end of the night and catching people as they left.

Once we took down the kiosk and packed everything in the Transit, I texted Woody. He was our deposit guardian for the night and the three of us drove to the closest Chase Bank and deposited the cash we’d pulled in, it was not an insignificant amount either. In fact, I was really glad for Woody’s presence. We headed back to the arena and, after we made sure the vehicle was locked down tight, Woody escorted us to the backstage area. The trip hadn’t taken as long as I’d thought it had since the VIP backstage pass holders hadn’t made it in to see the stars yet. Woody kind of forced us to go hit the catering area where they were real New York style pizzas and big salads and Buffalo wings and everything happiness. Joe and I were surprised to get a text from Noah. “We’ve gotta ‘After-Party’. Get presentable and wear your KAMA tags. Meet us in the Billboard Lounge in an hour.”

So that was exactly what we did. I hadn’t brought a lot of cute clothes with me. But I did have some nicer jeans, cute sandals and a few tank tops that would work. When I looked as hot as I could, I would not be embarrassed by being the youngest and the least attractive woman in the room. I just refused. I didn’t care about other males opinions, Joe loved me, but I was not giving any of those chicks shit to say on Twitter about me. We found our name tags…they looked like a cross between a traditional ID card and a pin on name badge. Darcy had created our KAMA tags, I think Hudson had done all the rest, or maybe they did it together. It had our name, picture and title. Of which, mine and Joe’s read, ‘Licensed SWAG Distributor’. She would be masterful at writing resumes. Because that title sounded a lot more impressive than overpaid teenage salesperson.

The party was actually pretty hopping when Joe and I got there. Darcy and Lester swooped down on us and kept us pretty close to them and the Rangeman crew until more of the people we knew started arriving. Unsurprisingly enough, the headliners were the last ones to show up. Mercedes looked too cute in a strapless, sun dress looking party dress that was white with defused lilac polka dots. I knew she was happy about the show, but I was also pretty sure that she was happy about having found a reason to have brought those Valentino espadrille wedges on the tour with her. She was wearing her long, wavy, ‘Pocahontas’ wig. Which I only knew was a wig because I’d sat and talked with her and Rickey as he’d removed Cede’s weave, washed and deep conditioned her hair and braided the entire mass into a really cool looking set of braids. Cede said that she wasn’t taking them out for at least two weeks because she would have an easy time greasing her scalp. I had learned so much about how black women cared for their hair in the years since I’d met Mercedes and Danica…I even knew how to do Maea and Mara’s hair and if white people thought adult black women’s hair was complicated, it was nothing compared to the complexity of doing the hair of little black girls.

Still, even as much as I had learned about black hair, I learned even more on the subject that evening. And that was nothing compared to all I learned from Rickey on a totally unrelated subject. I’d grown up in New York, even when we moved to Lima, I was already very cosmopolitan and shrewd and urbane or whatever…but Rickey was someone who introduced me to a completely new concept. Gender fluidity. See, Rickey was born with a penis. Unlike Unique, he didn’t want to chop his off. In fact he felt very much attached to it. “Chile please, it would be an affront against God to take a knife to the blessing that he endowed me with. There are men who get surgery to have anything close to what the Lord above chose to bless me with.” He said quite seriously.

Rickey explained that he was happy as a man somedays and others he felt more feminine. So he flowed back and forth between presenting as fully masculine and fully feminine and anywhere he felt like existing on that spectrum. His sexuality was even more interesting. He was omni-or pan-sexual. Rickey’s first consideration was not with the other person’s primary sex characteristics. There were things he loved about men and women though he preferred ‘Bill Clinton’ sex with women and ‘Ken Starr’ sex with me. I’d been so confused he made me google it and then asked Mercedes what on earth we’d learned in our government classes if we hadn’t learned about the only president in recent history to have undergone impeachment proceedings. By the time he finished his rant against our education system, I completely understood that he meant that he preferred penetrative sex with women and oral sex with men. To be honest though, reading that article made me understand a lot of Samantha and her friend’s jokes from when I was younger a lot better. After trying to explain it better, even though I understood it by that point, he finally just blew out a huff…blowing his magenta bangs back into the waterfall of curls that reached his wiry shoulders. “Look, it’s a whole mess Darling, but it all boils down to the Almond Joy- Mounds debate. Sometimes I feel like a nut…sometimes I don’t.”

I shook off the smile those memories brought to my face as I waved at Rickey where he stood across the room rocking a KAMA racerback tank top, a pair of carpenter jeans and a pair of purple stilettos. While he had his hair fro-ed out rather than in a weave, he still looked more feminine than one would have expected with some fabulous lipstick and eye makeup. I probably would have gone over to talk to him, but I was ambushed by a pleasant surprise. “Tessa-Darling, how on earth does your sister-in-law come into this club setting looking fit for a garden party and yet make the rest of us look like we’re dressed for the wrong occasion?” I heard my godmother’s distinctive voice and turned to see her, Isabelle, Miranda and Charlotte all dressed in chic little dresses and some gorgeous heels. I laughed and just pointed out that Cede was just ridiculously confident like that. “Ladies, I know it’s been years since you’ve seen her, but this is my beautiful goddaughter, Tessa, and that is her boyfriend, Joe.” 

Everyone said hello and Isabelle gave him an assessing look. “Joe, you have amazing bone structure and your eyes are very beautiful. Have you ever considered modeling?”

He shook his head definitively. “No ma’am. Vanity and conceit are almost as big a sin as the love of money.” He said honestly. “Besides, that was Sam and Puck’s thing. I just don’t think it’s something that would fit my personality.”

Isabelle pouted. She’d been trying to help Calvin find a new signature model for his men’s underwear line. Joe, with his non-traditional handsomeness, great eyes and intriguing hair would have been perfect. however, in his denial, he had given her a great idea to present to the irrepressible Mr. Klein. She would suggest he launch a campaign with Sam Evans and Puck Puckerman as the faces. Both men were fit and handsome…it could be as popular as the Marky-Mark campaign from the early nineties. She was drawn back into the conversation as Charlotte and I started discussing cheerleading and Judaism. Darcy, Miranda and Samantha were discussing the copyrighting of fonts and graphic design elements. Miranda was also clearly angling for an introduction to Ethan. I was barely listening to their conversation and I could easily tell that she felt overlooked and underappreciated at her current firm and would love to work with Ethan as KAMA grew. I thought for a second, it could work, he was looking for a lawyer to work primarily with the Commune’s property management business. I made sure to introduce the two of them later that evening.

Once I made that introduction, I looked over the room. Joe was speaking with Justin and Dave. He looked so handsome and happy. I saw Cede talking with a few people I sort of recognized, but couldn’t quite place. Sam and Puck were talking to several people. I noticed that they each had a drink in their hands. Their green bottles of Stella Artois changed out only once. The same thing was true for the fruity drink in Cede’s hand. The second glass of salmon pink liquid’s levels went down, but it was never emptied and when the trio’s second drinks were finally replaced, they were replaced with bottles of water. I realized that even though they were only twenty-one and twenty-two, they had at some point made the decision not to drink to excess and were keeping to that decision. I found it interesting, especially since I had heard about their experience with alcohol in high school. I wasn’t the same girl that had left Manhattan. When I moved to Lima, I’d not been a part of a peer group…at all…let alone one like the Cheerios where alcohol was such a part of their social interactions. Even with their desires to avoid extra carbs and empty calories, they still drank like fish when they had gatherings. I was woman enough to admit that given those interactions and what I knew of Samantha and her friends and how they behaved in social situations, I thought that drinking in social situations was just meant to be fairly heavy. That night I learned that I was wrong and it didn’t…probably shouldn’t…have to be.

The party was really fun. I had a good conversation with Liz Lemon, a writer for two NBC shows. She was really nice. But warned me that television writing was a whole different animal from what she’d planned for her life. “Be careful when you take that first job. We all want to make sure that we aren’t one of those people who end up sleeping in our parent’s basements…but if you get stuck in that field, you can suck you in and you might never be able to make your dreams come true.” She was more than a little tipsy and the way she said it was so much funnier. She was a funny person. I envied that about her. But I also knew that I was in a different position. My parent, Joe, my siblings, none of them would let me fall into just any job. And if they saw one trying to drag me into mediocrity…they would definitely slap some sense into me.

Considering that the party didn’t really start until almost two, it was no surprise that we didn’t board the buses until almost seven. Since we were knocking on twenty hours awake, no way could Joe or I drive the Swag Van the, roughly three hours, between Brooklyn and Albany. Instead it made the trip with Van, the other driver of our tour bus, behind the wheel. When we got to the hotel, Hudson got out of the main bus at the Renaissance Albany Hotel. She came back out about twenty minutes later with her tablet and a small box containing what looked like key packets. She headed back into Commune’s bus. Then she came to our bus and Tike got one key packet, Joe got one and told that he was rooming with Justin. Then she handed me a packet and told me to get with Sugar. Thankfully, Tana had woken us all up and made us all go ahead and pack our overnight bags for two nights, because we were able to get off the bus pretty quickly. Granted, we were in pajamas or comfy clothes. Heck, Mercedes was even wearing her scarf…but soon enough, we all got ourselves together and headed up to our rooms. I grabbed the first shower and was asleep before Sugar even made it into the bathroom.

I was shocked when the phone rang at five. It took me a minute to even recognize Hudson’s voice. “Good evening Tessa. The bosses are treating everyone to dinner at a nice steak house. You’ll need nice, date night, apparel. We’re all meeting in the lobby at seven.”

I woke Sugar, who I knew could sleep through a natural disaster with the only thing that would work. “Sugar…wake up everything is seventy-five percent off at Tiffany’s.”

“I’ve gotta get a pair of earrings.” She shouted as she startled awake. Once I was sure that she was actually, fully awake, I brought her up to speed and we took turns getting ready. With two eighteen-year-old girls in the room, we barely made it down in time. But we did make it. dinner was really good and afterwards Joe and Justin came to our room and we watched some TV. Joe and I were cuddled up on the room’s large chair while Sugar and Justin talked on the couch. Still the next day was a work day, so we called it a night at midnight and we all went to our separate beds.

The Albany concert was the next night, so our morning started with most of us in the hotel gym. We worked out and then showered and packed up before checking out and getting back on our buses. For most of the KAMA Crew morning was spent touring the Albany Institute of History and Art. While in the venue, the tour crew got everything all set up. At three, everyone arrived at the venue. The group and their Crew had a short practice and then they went through the sound and lighting check. It was when Alessia was doing her checks that Joe and I started our job. We put up the Swag Shak, then showered and put on our uniforms and we worked the concert. That was how things went for the rest of the week. We had Thursday off, but most of it was spent sleeping in our hotel rooms in Newark.

Friday night we had the concert at Newark’s Prudential Center. Bryant and Nadia came in early with Melli and her mom. Mell helped us with getting everything on the shelves faster so she could buy a poster that she could have gotten for free. But it was for a ‘friend’ at school, so maybe she wanted to authenticity certificate. Not long after they left to get their seats, Stephanie Plum came with several Rangemen along with her father, sister and brother-in-law and the elder two of her nieces. By that point, just half an hour later, we were swamped by crazed fans. But Mr. Plum was awesome. He let out a shrill whistle and made rabid New Jersey KAMA-leons get into manageable lines. He helped us out for the entire time before the concert started and I seriously wanted to kidnap him and take him with us. He told us that Stephanie was planning to take her best friend and her husband and kids to the Bridgewater concert the next night. “If the band is as good as my Pumpkin says they are, I’ll come to that one and help you all out again.” He must have loved KAMA as much as Ms. Plum did, because he was there at the TD Ballpark lending us a hand again.

The day to day work was pretty easy. If we headed out of the venues well rested, then Joe and I drove our Swag Van to the next stop. When our inventory in the van started running low, Darcy would send us more. Each package contained as much as had been in the van when we left Manhattan, enough for a month worth of venues. Thanks to our digital inventory system, it was easy for her to tell when we started running low. Since Darcy had a constant contact with Hudson and our full itinerary, it was really easy for her to send the package to our next hotel. Then Joe and I would have to spend a few hours logging everything into the inventory system to show it had arrived and refilling the bins in the van. We had it all down like science and by the time she had finally found us a third, we didn’t need them in the same way. The NYU senior, a big criminal justice major named John Ripley, just ended up mostly helping with setup, corralling crowds and making sure that we were able to run our smooth machine inside.

John was an interesting person. In a lot of ways, he reminded me of Puck’s classmate Kevin. He was tall and big and had a huge personality. But at the same time, he was gentle and caring and kind. At six foot seven and built enough to easily be mistaken for one of the Rangemen, John had no problem keeping the lines neat and people under control. But he was just as amazing at calming down an overwhelmed teenage girl as Joe or me and we were basically their ages and, being friends with Sugar, we had a whole lot of practice. Then again, the other day, I saw him glaring at something on his phone and my inner coward wanted to run far, far away even though the look was not directed at me. While the truckers usually had the van after concerts, Joe, John or I, drove it during the day and to the concert venues. Okay mostly it was Joe or John. The van didn’t exactly have a third seat, but I could sit on the floor comfortably between their seats and the bins and stuff. Neither of them could. The Swag Van and the transportation of our opening acts, which usually looked very similar to our van, was always nestled right in the middle of the caravan. As we drove, we talked. John was very committed to his life plan. He was majoring in criminal justice and would go on to law school from there. He planned to spend five years as a prosecutor before trying to get into the FBI. I outlined all the hoops Riker and Chris were going through and he thanked me for the information. “I think I’ll need to adjust my time line a little. I didn’t realize that it would take that long just to get into the training.”

He was like that about everything. He’d been raised Episcopalian, so he and Joe had these deep theological discussions that blew my mind. Joe said he felt the same way when John and I started talking politics and the state of things in America as it pertained to race, class and the fiction of an educated elite class. John thought that there was an educated elite and I thought that the only elite class in America was the upper one percent. “The real fiction is race as a class. The truth is that the rich convince poor White people that they don’t have to be concerned that their lives suck thanks to the rules the rich have put in place to keep the poor stuck in bad situations because as bad as they may have it…at least they aren’t Black or Brown or other.”

“By that line of thinking, then the poor should rise up and over throw the rich.” Joe pointed out quietly.

“Probably.” I admitted. “But it will never happen. The rich have all the resources and they have made sure that the poor have too much to do to just keep body fed and family together to even think of revolting.”

“But aren’t you a part of the rich?” John said pointedly.

I knew what he meant, but I also knew that he wasn’t grasping the true scope of things. “I’ll grant you that Puck and Cede and Sam have brought the family forward…but even with the money they’ve made and the fortune Uncle Saul is trying to turn it into…we are so not even close to the top one percent. Those families have enough wealth to not work for generations. Besides, it’s their money. Yeah, they’re planning on making sure that none of their siblings will have crippling student debt or whatever, but we are not the Kardashians. All of us younger sibs are making sure that we will have careers of our own and the Elder Sibs all have masters or more and are doing things for themselves.”

Joe smiled at me then changed the subject as he always did when John and I started getting into ‘loggerhead’ territory. He was good like that. We developed a great working relationship with John. He kind of became what Cede called a ‘play cousin’. He had so many tips for the two of us who were getting ready to start college. His personality gave me quite a few new character traits to build into a future character or something. So maybe it was not how I ever thought I would spend the summer after I graduated high school…traveling the country selling merch for a band…but it turned out to be completely awesome. Joe and I grew closer and closer working together…hanging out together every evening…just plain getting to know each other in ways we’d not realized that we didn’t know. The same could be said for our relationships with Commune and the rest of their, our, friends on the tour. I gained a lot of maturity over the course of the summer. I kept a blog…unpublished…because it was really just for me…but it really helped me to see the progression in my growth. I was proud of the person I was becoming and very proud of all that I had learned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Illy convinced me to go for a weekend schedule...that way if I post on Friday great, but if it doesn't make it up until Sunday, I'm still not late...I posted this on her and her hubby's 17th wedding anniversary.   
> Everything I convey on positive relationships, I've pretty much learned from watching them. 
> 
> Calling all Betas. Let me know if your interested in helping me keep things to the level of quality that you guys have come to expect from me. 
> 
> Calling all Commenters. Drop me a line and let me know what you think of the update.   
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	4. Happy (Ashanti), Karma Police (Radiohead) & Roadie (Tenacious D)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the Road with KAMA

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra Special Thanks to my new Beta DaughterofDarkness87. She is so awesome. I have really been #blessed when it comes to my beta readers.

Chapter 4

Happy (Ashanti)  
Tina PoV

When Mike and I got back to school after Spring Break, we were swept up into a miasma of studying and papers and exam prep. But no matter what, the feeling I’d had on that stage backing Mercedes, Puck and Sam…it was never far from my thoughts. When KAMA flew us to Manhattan to attend their second drop party, we signed the paperwork for our summer jobs. I had to be honest, I so didn’t read it. I trusted Mercedes’ uncle. I knew there wouldn’t be anything too heinous or harsh in there. It was at the drop party that I found out that the cool guy Mike and I had seen at Uncle Jesse’s club in San Francisco was their opening act that night and for a couple of regions of the tour. I was excited about that. He seemed like a really awesome and cool person. The last few weeks were so very hard. I wanted to focus. I needed to focus, but if I wasn’t in the action of learning or studying…or loving Mike…I was distracted by day dreams of what touring would be like. I texted with Tana and Adam a lot. Adam Kress was one of the funniest people I’d ever met. He made me laugh every time he replied to any of my million questions. But he was also insightful. “I’m not even joking when I say this…Sam and Puck try to kill us when we’re touring. They like to make us go for these long ass runs. Even the dancers be huffin’ and puffin’ by the time we make it back to the bus or the event space. Last summer they had us running in Texas in the summer. What the actual fuck? Sam is southern, he should have known better. I ‘bout died five times on one run.” He kvetched. I about died too…from laughing.

As our household prepped for our finals, we all got snarky and short tempered. I turned to Adam and even BaeBae for outside entertainment, since Tana was going through the same thing. Thankfully, Mike had bonded with Simeon and Jackson and they were able to talk him down when the pre-examination tension became just too much. At the time, it was just a way to keep ourselves sane during our exams. But, it was actually a blessing in disguise. When we arrived in New York after spending a week at home, Mike and I had friends in the Crew other than those we’d known most of our lives. It was really nice. It felt strange in a way though, almost as if we were stealing away Cedes, Sam and Noah’s people. Of course, when I confessed that feeling to Mercedes, she laughed at me. “Child please, you know friends are like cookies, they’re healthiest when they are shared.”

I didn’t stop laughing for, like, ten minutes when she said that tidbit of wisdom…but I could see the sense it made. Jealousy, envy and greed weren’t healthy. Friendship, sharing and caring were. I had to say though, I was really glad that she didn’t mind at all because without Adam to joke with and BaeBae willing to show me the dances I needed to know an extra time or two, even with the extra stamina building Mike and I had started doing after Spring Break, those pre-tour practices would have been the death of me. It was a lot harder than anything I’d done before. I did have to admit I was getting toned in a way I’d never realized was possible. I had Abs, okay they were little a abs, but still, I had definition. It was kick ass. Mike told me he loved me the same and I was beautiful either way, but we had an amazing round of love making that started because he finally understood what I meant when I said that his abs compelled me to lick them. It barely seemed as if we’d been in town a full day, let alone a week when we were assembled at the stadium to prepack the buses.

Oh my GOD, the tour buses were freaking awesome. Externally, it was easy to see that they all went together even if they weren’t all painted exactly the same. Commune’s bus was black with waves of purple and silver and the KAMA name in its trademarked font on the left side and back. The second bus was similar, but there was less purple and more silver and black. I noticed that it only had KAMA on the back. The third and fourth buses were just like the second even down to only having KAMA on the back. It was really easy to tell the Warner buses. They were almost pure black with thin whitish-beige waves. The transfer trucks were really cool, too… both were jet black and chromed out. The trailers were both painted, or whatever, to look like the main, KAMA, bus. But the cutest thing had to be the Swag Van. It was one of those fleet-vehicle type Nissan Transit vans, all boxy and efficient. But the paint job was pretty awesome. The top was black but it ombred from black through purple into silvery lavender. The lightest color was repeated in the KAMA Swag Van Logos on the sides and back. It was really epic. I was totally going to cop that for my hair, with blue tones rather than purple though.

When we got our bus assignments from Hudson, who was seriously, crazy efficient, we found out that Mike and I were on the same bus as Santana, Artie and Brittany. It was a special bus that had a lift for Artie’s wheelchair. Sam confided in me that when Santana went solo in a couple of years, they were going to give her that bus as a congratulations gift. It had a decent half bath in the main part of the bus and one with a shower in the back where Tana, Art-man and Britts slept. The five of us would be charged with watching over Tessa and Joe and Darcy and her boyfriend Lester would be in that bus too when they came on the road. The bunk area was between the front lounge and the ‘stateroom’. It contained six sleeping bunks, plus the couch could turn into a double bed. Mike and I claimed the middle and top bunks on the driver’s side at the front of the bunk area. We wanted as much space between us and Santana the Screamer as humanly possible. Poor Tessa and Joe had to take the bunks that shared a wall with the triad. We all listened to the admonishment of the tour manager and placed our pillows toward the back of the bus. The in-bunk iPad was already facing that way. The bunks were really nice themselves. There was a door that closed the bunks and bedroom off from the front lounge. Each one had an individual overhead bunk light, our own heat-slash-air vents, a plug for our other gear and a recessed pocket for storage of things that we needed in the bunk. I immediately used it to store a sleep mask, some extra hair bands, my special blue little friend and extra batteries for him. Mike was an amazing lover, but there were just times that a girl had to lend herself a hand.

The mattress in the bunk was plusher than I’d expected. There was a bolster pillow already there, the sheets were a silvery taupe color and there was a matching pillow case folded on the bunk waiting for the pillow in my hand and a purple fleece blanket arranged at the bottom. One sniff and I knew that Patrick had rewashed all the bedding for us. If I weren’t with Mike, I’d fight Viola for the pleasure of Patrick’s company…I’d never known that laundry could smell as good as he made it smell. I pulled the fleece blanket up and then spread my beloved Twilight novelty quilt over it. My small, heart shaped, Team Edward pillow was plopped on top of the other pillows and I felt as if the bunk was really mine. I stepped back and checked out what Mike had done to personalize his bunk. Not much, a second fleece blanket, that one in gray…a pillow for the waiting pillowcase. That was about it. That was my fiancé…a true minimalist. Once we had our clothes stored in the drawers that were allotted for our use, we took our luggage out and stored it under the bus. The meeting was interesting. Mike and I may have looked at each other and muttered ‘Don’t shit on the bus’, before dissolving into raptures of laughter several times over the next few days. We even did it during our couple’s massage at Faina. It became a running joke of ours for a long time after Lamar first uttered the words.

It may have been nerves, but it seemed like we blinked Friday afternoon and boom it was Saturday night and we were backstage at the Hammerstein Ballroom getting ready to go on stage. I looked down at myself. The outfit was amazing. It worked so well for all three of us even with our different body types. The black high waisted, liquid satin, wide legged pants thinned out my hips, elongated Santana’s legs and gave Xena’s legs some added fullness. The Spanx camisole tank had a built-in bra, so Santana didn’t have to bother with one, and gave me and Xena both some extra support. The heels were tan and a little boring, but they added height to me and Tana while disappearing mostly, so they were fine. But the piece that made the ensemble for me, my absolute favorite piece, was the red, black and beige ‘Valentino’ cropped, mandarin inspired, jacket. It looked amazing on each of us. I loved the way it seemed to frame our chests without making us look trashy. We were a perfect complement to Cedes ivory outfit with her red shoes. Mercedes’ hair was down in long water waves, so Xena, Tana and I had our hair pulled back into thick, curled ponytails, fairly innocent makeup with bold red lips and small silver hoops in our ears. We wouldn’t be completely identical every stop, but for the first night, it just seemed like it was the right way to jump off.

I was shaking in my Steve Maddens until the music started and then…it was as it was supposed to be. The first time we came to an ‘intermission’ I didn’t even realize that we’d completed the first set. We raced to the dressing room we shared with the eight female dancers and changed into our embellished black La Petite Robe di Chiara Boni Beba one-shoulder jersey flare-leg jumpsuits and purply-fuchsia Blue by Betsey Johnson Jenna strappy evening sandals. Our hair was pulled down to curl around our shoulders and our eye makeup emboldened to match our lips. Cedes’ jumpsuit was about the color of our shoes and she wore black sandals herself. Her hair was so long and curly and gorgeous. It was a great set. I floated through it and into our final change. For the last look of the night we were in stepped down versions of Mercedes’ very designer look. One shoulder, purple cropped tops, embellished black skinny-jean capris pants and shiny black sling back pumps. It was covered for two songs by seriously white choir robes but the songs we wore those robes for were so very important.

After the last song, I was in a headspace that I had never before experienced. I was happy it was done, hungry enough to eat a bear…but disappointed that I couldn’t hear and see the crowd loving what we were giving them any longer. We showered in the facilities that they venue provided then got dressed for a night out on the town. There were after parties to attend and according to Tana, there were connections to be made, if we wanted to make them. The next morning, I was cursing the fact that I was over twenty-one and praising Yeshiva for the fact that we didn’t have to be anywhere for a full twenty-four hours. Of course, when Monday morning got there, I was so anxious that I couldn’t sleep. I was up early double checking to make sure that I had everything that I was taking with me, my e-reader and laptop, both of which contained digital copies of every book on my summer reading list. I wished I could type papers on my iPad like Mike, but it just wasn’t comfortable for me. besides, my laptop had all my wedding planning stuff on it…including a great planning guide called Planning Pod that I’d downloaded. I couldn’t live without; it was really great. I’d have felt guilty for waking Mike, but he was just as anxious as I was.

I made it a point to make sure that we left our stuff neatly put away. Even though the last dates before classes started again we’d be in Washington state, we’d still be coming back to New York before went back to California. We’d get the last of our things then. We would have to make a stop back in Lima too. Mike and I had left our engagement rings with our parents. I was wearing a more traditional, and totally fake, ring we’d gotten off of Groupon. I felt naked without my ring, but no way was I letting it get stolen. When Santana and Brittany had heard about my idea, they’d done the same. It was a precaution that we needed to take since the only one who could really be guaranteed to wear their ring on stage would be Cedes, and dressing rooms weren’t the most secure places. Artie and Mike had just replaced their rings with tungsten bands. They did look different enough that people wouldn’t think they were together…not that there was anything wrong with that.

Mike and I showered and dressed and made sure that we had everything before heading down to the kitchen. It was pretty early, so I was surprised that Viola wasn’t alone. Kurt and Blaine had beaten us downstairs. Of course, it made sense; they weren’t going with us because Blaine was working at his father’s company again and Kurt was taking classes at FIT and working with Haja on some secret Commune project. He had loved working with Haja the summer before on decorating KAMA’s offices. I’d never seen him so excited about anything other than Blaine. It had been really cute. However, I could have lived without the constant texts of two barely different shades of purple to see which one was perfectly KAMA. Thank Yeshiva that Haja had eventually just had a special blend paint made to be perfect. That decision came at the perfect time. I had been really close to blocking Kurt between nine and two. Everyone was all dressed and ready long before we actually needed to head to the KAMA offices where we’d be boarding the buses. But since Commune were going, we decided to just go with them. I knew that my tourist was showing…but I loved riding the subway. At least, I loved riding the subway safely accompanied by a large group of people I knew including two highly trained military men turned bodyguards.

When we got to the offices, it was weird. I mean, Mercedes, Sam and Puck were my age. Technically, I was older than Mercedes and Sam…but they had an office and people who worked for them. I knew that I was, technically, one of those people, but singing with Mercedes, Puck and Sam was as normal to me as breathing. I ended up walking around with Santana, Brittany and Tessa, which, of course meant that we ended up leaving the bulk of the crew to go do something we probably shouldn’t have done which was how we ended up in the garage at the buses. But it turned out to be a good thing, we got to lend Hudson a hand, which let us know about the surprise Commune had for all of us before anyone else did. I loved knowing stuff before other people. The blankets were gorgeous and soft and seemed like they would be warm. The sleep mask was embroidered with our names and was way more conducive to light blocking than the one I’d found in Bath and Body Works.

The wait for everyone to arrive was pretty killer. I mean, I took the time to store my stuff and all, but that took maybe ten minutes max. The tension was exacerbated by the fact that everyone who arrived was almost thrumming with anticipation. It was pretty fun though. Because once personal items were stored, people came out and started clowning and joking. By the time it was time to load up; I kind of wondered if we hadn’t been given the extra time to get to know people and bond. I knew the regular crew didn’t need it, but us summer folks definitely benefited. It was fun riding the bus over to the Barclays Center. Hartman were driving over in their Swag Van so it was just the five old school New Directions. We spent the hour talking school and, whoa, Artie didn’t just have a summer reading list, he had like thirty movies he had to watch for his different film classes.

The drive time flew by. When we got to the Barclays center, the trucks were already there and the WMG buses had beaten us there too, because all the roadies were already working away. They were good. I mean, they were ridiculously good. So were the sound and lighting people. It was a good thing they were so good at their jobs. Even with as fast and efficiently as they worked, the day was still very full. While they were building and arranging and all that, the dancers, singers, band and KAMA warmed up and stretched. Then we practiced…and practiced…and practiced. I knew I shouldn’t mind, it was the nature of the job. And I did have to learn a lot of dance moves, no one on a KAMA stage just stood and swayed unless the song called for it. But still, I wasn’t quite used to the level of activity that Commune demanded of their people. It was good for me…but damn. After practice was sound check and then lighting check. Then we went into the locker rooms and showered and moisturized and pulled on button front shirts and yoga pants then reported to our hair and makeup persons. The clothes that night were even better than the previous concert. The wardrobe matrons were awesome. We all had three outfits per concert and there were three alternatives for each of us for each region. They managed to keep nine different outfits for twenty-six people cleaned, pressed, ready and sorted to the right person through everything…plus the robes. They were called Wardrobe Matrons, but only one of the duo was technically female. Beverly St. Christian and Joseph Norwich were friends of Noah’s grandmother. They had been working as matrons for fifteen years and had worked under her on the soap opera. They were the consummate team, on tour and off. They’d been married for the better part of a decade. They were almost fifty and yet, they had more energy than all the rest of us at the end of the night, though they’d been running around like crazy making sure that everything was where it needed to be. I wanted to be them when I grew up.

After the concert, we showered and as we were getting dressed, Hudson popped her head in and told us to get changed and head to the after party at the Billboard Lounge. I was kind of shocked. When I asked Santana about it she just laughed, “Girl Asian, Aretha, Trouty and Puck don’t go to the after parties unless the promoter is paying them to be there. That’s why they didn’t bother with the one the other night. Now, the thing about our beloved KAMA is that they are the types of bosses republitards have in mind when they swear that that dumbass economic theory called ‘Trickle Down’ actually works. Because when Commune gets paid…we get pain, in this case in the form of bonuses.” Then she Britts and Artie did a fast three-way hand slapping thing that was too thruply cute. So, we got dressed to go and party. I didn’t have much in the way of club ready apparel, but I had some really sexy black leather look leggings and a silver cowl front tank top that I could rock with a black under bust corset and boom, I was sexified. Of course, Mike had it easy. A pair of jeans, a silken tee shirt and boom, he was all gorgeous.

The party was fun. There wasn’t much in the way of food, but the drinks were flowing and I was one happy little back ground singer. We danced and drank and made merry. It was really a lot of fun…until we realized that it was like six in the morning and we were, officially, just a couple of hours away from having been awake for a full, literal day. After the Barclays Center, we were in Albany, then two stops in New Jersey. After that we were in Philly and we got to go see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall and we went to the zoo. Of course, then Brittany messed it all up by asking if it was prison for animals and what their crimes could have been. Then Sam, Puck, Artie, Adam and Damien started trying to come up with the causes of the animal’s ‘unfortunate incarceration’. So that was pretty hilarious.

After Philly, we went to Baltimore then did another show in Maryland before hitting DC for a show. I got to meet Mercedes’ married cousins. Her cousin Hannah was nowhere near a horrible as I’d have thought given everything. She seemed to be trying really hard to be a better cousin to Cedes. I was glad. Because I liked her and as her best friend…I couldn’t like someone who was mean to Cedes…it was a rule. After we checked out of the hotels that the promoter arranged for us in Washington proper, we spent the small break at Prince William Forest RV Campground about an hour from DC and an hour away from our next stop in Richmond. The place was pretty much the exact opposite of what I was expecting. There were hookups for water, sewer, electricity…the works. Each ‘site’ also had a fire pit and there was a big pool for the campers to enjoy. The most interesting thing was that the campground also had a coin laundry mat next to the showers. We found the campgrounds to be some peace in the intensity of the tour. Of course, we didn’t spend all our down time at the campgrounds.

Cedes, Sam and Puck had Hudson make all these special arrangements. When we were settled and all the hookups connected, a bunch of fifteen-person passenger vans popped up and we drove up to Maryland to Six Flags America. We spent six and a half hours riding roller coasters and running through the park like we were twelve-year-olds let loose to run amuck. It was fabulous. Hudson had gotten us passes, dining passes and Flash Pass that let us breeze through the lines. There were thirteen coasters or thrill rides and Mike and I rode them all twice. We ran into Commune and they had taken advantage of their fore-knowledge to bring suits so they’d done all the water rides. Mike and I met up with Hartman for a late lunch and Joe’s locks had been braided up and into a kind of crown dealy to allow him to go on the coasters and rides that they would have been considered a hazard for. Mike asked him about it and he told us this great story. “When we were getting in line for the BatWing Coaster, one of the park people said that I would need to secure my hair. I had no clue what he was talking about. But this Black lady with skin like mahogany and locs even longer than mine, she grabbed me and Tee by the hands and she took us over to the side. She taught Tee how to pull them up into a ponytail really high on my head and make them into this bun…and it hasn’t moved. We tried to thank her and she shushed us. ‘Never say the words thank you to someone for doing your hair. It will make it all drop out. I’m sure that you appreciate it.’ Then she told us that we were an almost perfect match, and patted out cheeks.”

“Tina, I wish you could have met her. She didn’t look any older than Moms D…but the way she spoke and the way she just felt…it was as if she were millennia old. She was amazing.” Tessa finished the retelling.

“That’s really cool. Who else have you ran into?” I asked curiously, even as a part of my mind tried to come up with which mannerisms and body language could be used to convey an aged wisdom far greater than the body’s appearance.

We talked as we ate then went on a few rides together. When we ran into Artie, Britts and Tana near the Mind Eraser we ended up turning our group of four into a group of seven. Which turned out to not be a bad thing. Flash Pass plus Artie’s chair…we had like zero wait for most of the rides and attractions after lunch. Tessa and Joe got swallowed up by Sugar and her crew of the temporary dancers when we ran into them. But then we ran into Xena, Arjun and the Dam Bros, and it really became a party. Tana, Xena and I all got matching henna tattoos. While Arjun and the Dam Bros did the same. Mike and Brittany said that they would let that be a background singer thing when we suggested they get the dancers together to do something similar. But the day wasn’t just spent riding the rides and exploring the attractions. There was so much shopping. My father loved the DC universe of superheroes, so I got tons of souvenirs for him and mom. Mike’s dad’s secret love of comic book heroes was well fed too. It felt amazing to buy my parents gift with my own money…even at the inflated theme park prices.

That night when we got back to the campground, we were all talking and laughing and it was just great. It took us forever to get all showered and in pajamas and down for the night, but once our heads hit our bunk pillows, we were down for the count. On Monday, we all got up and after all the walking the day before, everyone was happy to stick with yoga and core training for our exercise. Then we all took care of our laundry and whatever. While I folded mine and Mike’s things, my mind went to a slightly pressing fashion issue that I was facing. After the DC Concert, we had all attended another after party as we had in the previous three huge cities, but not in the smaller one. With that pattern established, I was able to anticipate which dates on the tour would be more likely to include the need for club clothes. Cities like Atlanta and Charlotte, yes…places like Jacksonville and Columbia…not as likely. I had mentioned to Mike in passing that I didn’t think I had enough club appropriate apparel to roll with Mercedes anymore. It was just a joke…a bad one…but I so didn’t expect what happened next. Apparently, Sugar who was coming to go over some dance steps with Mike, over heard. She went running to tell ‘Momma Cedes’ all about how there was a need for an emergency shopping trip.

There was a multi-level mega mall in Arlington, VA that Mercedes had been day dreaming of since she visited the capital with her parents long before the fortune and fame. Tuesday morning when we came back from Sam and Puck’s ‘running in the wild’, I was surprised when we all got a text demanding our presence and to be dressed to go to Arlington National Cemetery for the tour. Actually, I wasn’t that surprised. We’d done culturally important things other places too. We just usually knew the night before so we’d be up, dressed and out on time. Still, anything was better than starting the summer reading we’d all said we were going to start during our down time that week. Now I had to say, there was no lie in the message. We did go to Arlington. We were there for like three hours. I found out a bunch of really interesting facts, including that the land had been commandeered after Robert E. Lee had decided to fight for the Confederacy. I loved that fact. Fuck him for fighting to keep black people enslaved. He deserved to lose that beautiful land. Of course, I didn’t just learn and laugh in righteous indignation…I also cried…a lot. Like almost to the point of dehydration. But it totally wasn’t my fault. When we were at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, Sam, Adam and Damien sang this really said song that I later found out was called ‘Arlington’ by a country artist named Trace Adkins. I was a total wreck for like an hour after that. Seriously, it was so touching. I wasn’t the only one who cried…everyone there at the time was at least a little saddened. Most of the other ladies shed a tear or twenty…I was just the only one who couldn’t seem to stop.

After the tour, and me desperately sucking down three of the seriously overpriced Dasani’s in the gift store…and all of us buying a few souvenirs for our families back home, we got back into the rentals and followed our lead vehicle in a caravan that headed to the Fashion Center at Pentagon City instead of back to our tour buses. We spent twice as long at the mall as we had at the national memorial. So seriously…Mercedes kept the New Direction women together and we shopped until the guys literally came and dragged us away. I discovered a store called Altar'd State and got quite happy. It was there that I had a realization. I’d paid for a few things…a top I saw that was absolutely perfect for DJ and some DC souvenirs…but other than that, Cedes told me to consider it a bonus. I noticed that she made Santana and Brittany pay for more of their own stuff and pointed that out. “Tee, Tana and Britts have been getting paid well for over a year. Trust and believe they’ve got the cash to buy their own shit. Besides they go clubbing without us all the time. You and Mike go out to a club twice a month. You wouldn’t need these clothes if not for me. Now, hush your mouth and say thank you.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “You do realize that I cannot both hush and say thank you at the same time, right?” I smiled sweetly and thanked her…then I gave her a hug so she knew I meant it. “I’ll be honest, I wore my last cute club type outfit at the DC after party. I don’t want to embarrass everybody by looking like a country bumpkin.”

“Girl, you know we don’t give a damn. You do you. But there are tons of industry people who pop up at the after parties. If you can start your come up…why not look good doing it?” Cedes said with a big grin.

“You have a point. But I’m not ready for primetime yet. So, we’ll just call all of this practice.” I told her and we headed out to find the Haagen-Dazs we’d noticed on the mall directory. We had a slightly early dinner in the food court, which, inevitably, led to an impromptu autograph signing for KAMA. Then we booked it back to the buses. That evening, while Santana, Artie and Britts were enjoying their king-sized bed in the stateroom and Tessa and Joe were over in the Ladies Bus visiting Sugar and watching movies, Mike and I found out that by putting me on top and sticking very close together, the love making didn’t just occur, it was mind-blowingly good. Then we followed it up by breaking more than a few of the RV park’s laws in the ladies’ showers. Ah yeah, good times. The next day, we headed into Richmond where we all had rooms at the Richmond Marriot very close to the Coliseum. I found out that the tour crew and the drivers were all in a Holiday Inn Express a few more blocks away. The promoter had made all the arrangements, and had put KAMA’s people in the same hotel as KAMA per their contract, but had read it very strictly so they felt comfortable saving some of their profit by putting the road crew and others in a less expensive hotel.

I wasn’t mad at them. They were putting us up an extra twelve hours ahead of the concert, a fact that I appreciated. With all the running and practicing and showering in the wild…I was in desperate need of a bubble bath. So, I took a nice long one and managed to knock out both Everyman and Dr. Faustus for my fall theater class. After our mornings of relaxation, KAMA took everyone, Crew and crew, Rangemen and drivers out for lunch at the Tarrant’s Café. Basically, they rented the place out and fed all, like, hundred and fifty of us. It was really cool though. I got to know a lot of the tour crew that I hadn’t met. Mike and I had a good conversation with John Ripley, the recently added third member of ‘Team Swag’. He was mainly helping with setup and crowd control. Which worked he was almost as big as some of the Rangemen. It was interesting. When I was talking to Tessa, I realized that she and I both catalogued and memorized people, their personalities, and their mannerisms. I talked to them and tried to understand their insecurities and their foibles. Tessa watched them and tried to figure out their backstories and future. She and I got really close over the course of the tour from New York to our first Virginia stop. So much so that we spent a good bit of the after party discussing people and making up their backstories and motivations.

As much as I was learning about people, both those on the tour and those who just loved KAMA and/or music in general, I was learning even more about myself. There would never be a time I didn’t love being on stage with Mercedes, Santana, Sam and Puck…all of our friends really…but in the back of my mind, I knew that I was falling in love with acting more than I ever thought possible. I couldn’t help but remember the words of my theater professor after I gave my monologue performance that made up the class final. “Ms. Cohen-Chang, I have to admit, it is rather rare of me to ask this…but are you majoring in theater?”

I shook my head. “I’m actually majoring in performance studies and music. Theatre is my minor though.”

Mr. Bald nodded. “That is something at least. I was hoping that you would be majoring in theater because you show an amazing aptitude and talent on that stage. Your Antigone managed to convey the rebellion and stubborn loyalty that the character demands while giving her an innocence that most people forget she’d still hold and have.”

“Wow…thank you.” I said very deeply touched. “I haven’t done much acting. I was painfully shy in high school. I found my voice in our school’s show choir but I could not make myself brave enough to really try out for the theater productions.”

He smiled gently. “The beauty of acting is getting to show the world someone else, while keeping your truest self hidden and shared only with those you choose to let in.”

“I never thought of it like that?”

“There are those who utilize their talents in that manner. There are those for whom fame is not as frightening. They use fame to live out loud.” He said wisely. I understood what he meant. That was how Cedes, Puck and Sam were. I said as much, unthinkingly and Mr. Bald chuckled. “Your friend has one of the most expressive faces I’ve ever seen on screen. But her voice…it is without match amongst her peers.”

I smiled proudly. “Mercedes’ voice is amazing. She would tell you that I’m just as good. I come close…but she has me beat on her range and the intensity that she can wield with it; the emotions that she can induce in others with it. Sam and Puck have really stepped up their game to keep up with her.”

Mr. Bald’s gaze locked on mine. “Ms. Cohen-Chang, Tina…I think with training you could be as strong an actress as Ms. Jones is a singer.” He finally said after reading my soul for several long moments. “You just have to decide if you want it enough.”

Those words just kept reverberating inside my mind over the days and weeks of the tour. Did I really have the kind of talent Mr. Bald said he saw in me? And if I did…Did I want to be an actress enough to go after it? Did I want it enough?

Karma Police (Radiohead)  
Ambient PoV  
Quantico, VA

Aaron Hotchner looked around the table at his team. They were meeting to discuss the case Assistant Director Pescia was putting quite a bit of pressure on them to resolve. Originally, the Assistant Director had simply wanted a profile worked up to allow for local law enforcement to move forward. But with proof of corruption, bribery and other malfeasance on the part of several local law enforcement agencies involved…the case had moved up the food chain and Director Comey had them actively pursuing the case. He wanted the BAU to take down the actual unsub and build an unshakable case against the corrupt LEOs in California. The seven members of the BAU team were more than happy to take on the task.

They had gone over the evidence with a fine-toothed comb. Garcia had been able to use her amazing skills to trace campaign donations, both those that were on the books and those that were of a more personal…off the books…nature. She had found even more pies that he had his thumb in than Rangeman had managed to uncover. Corbin Richardson was a power-player. He collected corrupt officials like some people collected comic books. There wasn’t a major metropolitan area that he didn’t have a connection or three living in. Rossi had been invaluable in building the unsub’s profile. He was able to speak with more than a few of their shared acquaintances to find out more about the man…information they rarely had access to before anyone was hurt. Spencer had combed through the unsub’s company and personal financial records and had been able to pinpoint the man’s movement of funds off-shore and the purchase of a large estate in Manama, Bahrain, where he had some previous ties and investments. However, that was not the only aspect of the unsub Dr. Reid had been researching. “The current swing towards more mainstream acceptance of relationships like that between Mercedes Jones and either Sam Evans or Noah Puckerman actually began in spring twenty-twelve when a hotel manager turned blogger posted a blog called ‘redefining beauty’ that went viral. It spoke of him having overheard a teenager staying at the hotel speaking to an ex-girlfriend about a current or future love interest. The young man said that he was redefining his beautiful. It led to the blogger finally beginning a relationship with a girl he had liked for a long time, but who he hadn’t asked out because she wasn’t what was considered by society to be beautiful. He’s continued to blog about their relationship as it has progressed and the couple recently became engaged. However, since the rise in popularity of KAMA and the greater acceptance of a more diverse range of body types, there have also been some rather significant attempts to redirect everyone back to the established societal norms. But those norms have only been in place for the last twenty-five years. In the eighties, the preferred body type averaged a size six. In the seventies…after the height of the popularity in the sixties of Twiggy, the ideal swung back to a more ‘healthy’ thin. The eighties became the decade of the ‘hard bodies’, thin and fit…but again athletic. But before the advent of Twiggy, societal ideas of beauty had always fluctuated between healthy, athletic, fit women and more curvaceous, voluptuous women. I’m still not sure why it is suggested that women look like me to be considered beautiful.” The last was muttered, but someone at the table heard it.

“Because we let a gay man decide what female beauty should be,” Rossi grumbled. “I’ve never been one to follow the current trend of preferring women shaped more like pre-pubescent boys. No offense Reid.”

“None taken.” Reid shot back. He liked women who were thin, but not those who were emaciated to the point that they lost all the defining characteristics of femininity. Breasts and rounded hips were not a bad thing for a woman to possess. 

“Now instead of people calling a preference a preference, they address it as a fetish. A terminology that is grossly incorrectly applied but it forces most people with a preference for curvaceous women to internalize those desires in a way that is unhealthy. It is simply that some men prefer voluptuous women, some prefer women who are merely shapely.” Rossi continued. “Today, Jennifer is the closest on the team to the high standard of beauty. But there was a time when Kitten and Tara would have been fought over…when men would have killed each other for the pleasure of their company.”

Morgan smirked over at his best friend and girlfriend. “I know I still would, Baby Girl.” He said teasingly.

Tara chuckled but pointed out a second variation on the theme. “We should also consider the long-held stereotypes of Black women and how they play into the Unsub’s obsession. Black women have been portrayed since slavery as over sexual, overly sexualized, ‘fetishes’. It may be part of why he has so greatly dehumanized her and thinks of her in terms of possession.”

Rossi shook his head. “That’s true. It makes no sense, though. Considering that the only sexual interactions slaves had with the ruling class was nonconsensual…how did the stereotype of the lascivious Black woman even start.”

Garcia surprised them all by answering. “The same way it usually does in cases of rape victims being vilified…other women. The prevailing theory online is that the White women were upset that their husbands preferred the slaves to them, so they started claiming that it was all the slave women’s fault…that they had lured the poor unsuspecting Masters into their beds with their voluptuous bodies and their immorality. Slut shaming and victim blaming all rolled into one.” Seeing the looks of surprise and almost pride on the faces of her colleagues, Penelope blushed bright red. “What? Most thick women online communities are populated by Women of Color. I’m usually the only white woman in the room. I’m shaped far more like most Black women than White.” She said defensively.

Hotch allowed himself a small grin before calling them back to the matter at hand. “Reid, what else did you find out that could give us an idea as to Richardson’s next move?”

Reid looked thoughtful. “Richardson currently seems focused on two things. He is trying to distract from his obsession by convincing those who know that he has moved on to Toccara Jones, a television personality, fashion model, occasional actress and singer. They have been dating since his return from that European business trip in February and March. There seems to be very little likelihood that the unsub is in anyway serious about the relationship. He would never move on from a quarry until he had gained satisfaction. Besides, his second focus precludes that conclusion. He is moving things around to enable him to permanently move to Bahrain, a country which though it has diplomatic relations with the US, it does not have an extradition agreement with us. Currently, the duality of those two foci means that he is staying in California…but he has to be planning something. He won’t move without Ms. Jones.

“Richardson won’t find getting to her easy or simple.” Derick Morgan said with a feral smile. It had been down to Morgan to concentrate on the victim profile. He’d been able to glean a lot of information from the family of Mercedes Jones that he had access to. “Rangeman considers her protection a top priority. Through their connection with KAMA, they’ve increased their profitability across the board and several of the KAMA team members work with Rangeman on a contractual basis. According to Ramos, two Rangemen are involved in serious relationships with people associated with the group. According to the family…even if he does manage to get past Rangeman, no way is Jones not a danger to him herself. She’s been raised to fight and fight hard. Though she might not for herself, she will for her men and her family. I’d say possibly never seeing them again would give her a damn good reason to fight harder than ever before.”

Those assembled at the table acknowledged the truth of that statement. Hotch did want more information. “What did you find out at the concert Saturday night?”

“Other than the fact that we’re probably gonna be parents in nine months?” Garcia whispered to herself and JJ and Tara.

“Baby Making Music?” Tara asked quietly.

Penelope nodded. “Better than Barry White and Luther Vandross combined.” She admitted with a wicked grin. “We barely made it into work on time this morning and I don’t think poor Clooney had a run since Saturday morning.”

The three women shared a smile older than all three of them combined. Hotch, Rossi and Reid looked at Morgan in a look just as old. Equal parts respect and good natured envy. “Well, other than that, what did you learn pertinent to the case?”

“The Rangeman presence is as solid as one would expect. The VIP groups are led from the arena to the backstage and given an hour-long facilities tour. The ‘guests’ use that time to hit the vendors they pass for things to get autographed.” A not so hidden glance at his partner for the evening’s assignment told the team how Garcia had spent the break. “I’m pretty sure that the tour is just Rangeman’s way of doing a last-minute check on the VIPs to make sure they aren’t a danger, but they say that it is so that KAMA can get cleaned up and presentable. When we got into the dressing room, the group was there as was a primary guard. That evening they were also accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Jones. Franklin Jones was watching everyone who entered that room like a hawk. He takes his responsibility to his younger cousin very, very seriously. Ms. Jones is smart. When Hannah introduced me and Baby Girl, Mercedes cut her off before she could say that we were FBI in front of others. She figured out quickly that we were on the job and it didn’t need to be said why.”

Rossi looked impressed. “She’s taking her situation seriously. That’s good. How about her counterparts?”

“They pay every bit as much attention as Jones. The three of them have their people, kids they grew up with and can trust, in every area of their crew. Plus, they have one of Evans’ relatives in their driver pool. I know for a fact that Puckett has more information than he’s admitting to.” Morgan said bluntly.

“How do you know that?” Hotch asked curiously.

Morgan smiled. “Ramos…Rangeman is pretty sure that the Puckett family knows something is going on and is making moves to protect the kid and his wife and husband. The theory on it was that during the ‘persuasion’ of Macardo to get him to turn himself in, that Puckett cousin found out something he took back to the family…something that they are not telling anyone outside the genepool.”

“What do we know about the Puckett family?” Hotch asked curiously. “Should we look farther into them?”

Reid’s head came up fast. “No.” he said firmly. He didn’t elaborate. How could he tell his family that it was one of his mother’s most closely guarded secrets? Even Spencer himself didn’t know all of it. But what he did know was disturbing enough that he’d never share it with anyone. Diana Reid had been taken from a clinic as a newborn by a nurse who had raised her. The Puckett woman had given birth to triplets, but had been so out of it afterwards that she’d never realized the lie the nurse had told her. The mother had shown up so far into labor that the doctor couldn’t get there in time to deliver the babies. The nurse had done it all alone. The woman who had raised his mother had not even known the woman’s first name. Diana’s ‘mother’ had always said that there was nothing good that could come of Diana’s birth family finding out where she was. With her schizophrenic paranoia, Reid knew that it was too late for her to ever meet them. He quickly covered with the information he’d uncovered since he found out the true history of why his mother was an only child. “The Puckett family is large and skates the line of legality. Several branches are law abiding…but for the most part those are the exception. And legal or criminal…those with Puckett blood are all family and they are as cloistered as any mafia family. They take care of each other to the exclusion of the rest of the world. It is rare that the women of the family take their husband’s names…or in the usual circumstance…give their children their father’s names. Gabrielle Puckett was a rarity in that she took Sander Evans’ last name and gave her children his name as well.” He was relieved when Hotch didn’t ask any further questions. Just took it as Reid being Reid and moved on.

“Okay then…it is another avenue of protection for the primary target, but doesn’t help us with taking down the Unsub and his network of influence with him.” Rossi pointed out to the table at large. Though, he was actually considering making an overture to Gabrielle Puckett-Evans. Richardson wouldn’t go down easily. If they could get someone close enough to the man to facilitate the man’s fall…it would certainly be helpful. And while he had many connections that could have been useful, none of them lived or worked west of Chicago.

The BAU team went back to work, assessing the best way to ensure that Corbin Richardson’s current mission in life was unsuccessful.

Roadie (Tenacious D)  
Azimio PoV

It was seriously the best decision of my life to take the job with Puck, Jones and Evans. Don’t get it twisted, it was hard work. I mean, so fucking hard. In the first couple of weeks on the road, I lost inches off my belly, ass and thighs. I was strong as hell though. I mean, hella strong. I knew that my coach was going to be seriously happy when I got to camp that fall. But more than that, when I got that first paycheck and realized that after taxes, I’d cleared more than twice what I could have working any shift at the Sprawl Mart in Lima, I knew that, even though I missed Lil Bird more than I could say, it was the right choice for us. It was hard work, but I learned a lot. I learned a shit ton about wiring and pyrotechnics and, to my surprise, carpentry. I learned how to pack a truck and how to do a bunch of things I wasn’t sure I would ever need in the future, but who knew.

Dave and me, we were back on total, best friends for life, almost brother, godfather of my child, status. Our bunks were right together. When we stayed in hotels, we shared a room with each other. When I Skyped with Lil Bird, he was over my shoulder reminding her that her G-Paw loved her. When he Facetimed with LaKeith, I was right over his shoulder picking and teasing, until they got to serious, lovey-dovey talk…then I dipped to the left and gave them their privacy. I may have watched LaKeith dicking Dave down that one time…but that had been satisfying a morbid sense of curiosity. I didn’t need to see anything more than that. When we weren’t talking to our people, we were talking to each other. We knew that it was easy to outgrow a friendship…especially when it was built on commonalities that had changed and were no longer so common. So, we talked and we found new shit in common.

But we weren’t reclusive. We made lots of friends among the rest of the tour crew. For the most part, they were cool people. They taught us all about groupies and the kinds of people who would drop to their knees in a heartbeat for a chance to get closer to the stars. I was just happy that none of the rest of the crew harassed Dave for his gayness. A few of them even laughed at the thought. “More than a few of the guys on this run…they don’t exactly care what the rest of the body is carrying as long as the mouth is pretty and doesn’t have a gag reflex.” Mikey, one of the lighting techs told me when I mentioned the lack of bullshit to him. “Besides…Jergens, herself, picked the crew for this tour. Only the clean and the non-bigots…one guy slipped through the net on the clean…he isn’t a junkie…but he will slang when he needs cash.”

“Damn,” I said quietly. “Is he gonna be a problem for Puckerman, Jones or Evans?”

Mikey shook his head. “Naw, he’s got better sense than that. This is the nicest tour we’ve ever been on. Our per diems are fat as hell. The band takes us out to eat with their people when they do a full group meal. Man, they took us all with them to Six Flags…that came out of their own pockets. Nobody does that for random, label hired roadies. That was some pretty epic shit. Not to mention, at the Norfolk stop the other day, Puckerman saw me setting up some gels and reached up and tied my shoe for me after calling me by name and telling me to be careful climbing things with loose laces. They are internationally known pop-stars and they are learning our names and just basically treating us like we’re real people…it would be madness to fuck this up. I personally want to make the cut the next time they do a tour.”

When I told Dave about that convo, he and I made it our business to find the guy, a cat named Hank. We ‘befriended’ him and kept close tabs on him all the damn time. It wasn’t a real hard ship. He was a cool enough guy. He wasn’t tall or handsome, but he was strong and pulled his weight. He never minded answering our questions and if he did sell shit from time to time…he never got high as far as we could tell. Thing was, Dude was in almost constant contact with his brother Jim who worked in LA. I wasn’t sure why, but every time Hank mentioned Jim, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I shrugged it off at first…but that shit never went away. As we moved from Virginia to the North Carolina stops, it seemed to be getting worse. So, the night after the Charlotte concert, once everything was broken down and on the trucks, while most of the rest of the tour crew was making their way to the after party, I found Dave and asked him to come with me to find Woody. Dave and the Texan Rangeman had bonded over some ‘only those who have lived in the Lone Star State can understand’ stuff. But I knew he was good people and would actually listen to me.

“I know it sounds crazy, but man…every time Hank says something about his brother, it’s like my skin crawls and I just…I don’t know how to explain it. But it’s like my hackles rise and I just want to break his neck…or get far the fuck away from him. The weirdest part is that I can talk to Hank for an hour and until he mentions Jim, I’m fine with Hank. He comes across a little skeevy…but not really sketchy. Ya know?” I finally told the Rangeman.

“We did background checks into all the tour crew. Hank Schmidt…born to Hardin and Jessica Schmidt of Good Intent, Kansas. Has two brothers, Mitchell and his twin James, or Jim…one sister, Laura. She died at twenty of an accidental drug overdose while in the hospital getting an appendectomy. Jim lives in Torrance, California…Mitchell followed his parent’s footsteps and teaches school in Good Intent.”

I shook my head in consternation. “See, I’m good with every name you just said…but every single time you talked about Jim…I got the wiggins.”

Woody seemed thoughtful. “I’ll get Hector and Grunt to look into Jim Schmidt. Maybe there is something there. Maybe there isn’t, but it doesn’t hurt to check.”

I felt so much better after that. I didn’t have a lot of friends…not as many as I thought I did in high school…but the ones I had now were real and they were important to me…none more so than my Lil Bird’s godparents. I was going to make sure that I take care of them just as much as they are taking care of me and of her. Yeah, Mercedes really should learn that Dave can’t hold water. She’s flying my parents, my cousin Rae, and Lil Bird out to meet us in Tulsa for my baby’s birthday. I’d been almost sick with the thought of not being there when she turned two. Come to find out, having missed her goddaughter’s first birthday, Mercedes wasn’t all that keen on missing a second. She’d told Dave so he could convince me not to take the day off and fly home. He could not keep a secret. He had to tell somebody, so he’d told LaKeith. I just happened to have been‘asleep’ in the bunk above him during the telling. Yeah, every night when I said my prayers, the first thing I prayed for after I prayed for Robyn, Rae and my parents, was the continued health and well-being of Jones, Evans and Puckerman. They damn well deserved it. Then I prayed that I would have the kind of future that let me take care of Lil Bird and raise her right…because she deserved it too.

Yeah, I may not have been gung ho when I agreed to take the job as a summer tour roadie. But I knew that the decision was the right one. I also, found that I kind of hoped that I’d have the chance again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rest in Peace Chester Bennington  
> May you find the peace in death that eluded you in life.  
> Thank you for sharing your unique voice and giving the world some truly Awesome music.  
> Rest in Peace Nelsan Ellis  
> Rest well back in the arms of the better angels.  
> Lafayette was one of the single best characters I've ever had the pleasure to watch week after week.  
> You will be surely missed.
> 
> Friends & Readers,  
> Drop me a comment.  
> Share your Thoughts & Ideas.  
> Reach out if you need help.


	5. Traveling Band (Credence Clearwater Revival) & Here 2AM Version (Alessia Cara)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mercedes and Puck tell us more about the Aesthetic Enjoyment Tour as the summer progresses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> Whatever you call your deity, may He/She/They bless & protect DaughterofDarkness87, my incredible new Beta.
> 
> Disclaimer: If it is real or you recognize it, I don't own it...unless you've been reading the series long enough that you swear Bubbie Ruth and some of the other OCs are canon...LOL

Chapter 5

Traveling Band (Credence Clearwater Revival)  
Mercedes PoV

I thought I knew what touring was. We had toured the summer before…the Aesthetic Enjoyment Tour wasn’t our first time at the rodeo…I thought I was prepared for it. I was so not ready. No two tours were alike, and an arena tour was completely different from a festival tour. Hudson and Darcy, in the office, they did everything they could to help. Even with the super tightly packed schedule, they had built in down time. Time which we could fill with things we wanted to do, like museums, theme parks and just fun…but by the middle of June, I was already so damn tired. I knew that I was trying to do too much. I had given myself until the first Monday of the month off before I started working on my summer reading assignments. I was taking five classes in the fall at Columbia and another four at Julliard, but two of them were really reading intensive. The good news was that I had completed all of my core requirements by the end of my sophomore year, just as I had planned way before I ever agreed to a three-way date, of the dirty kind. The bad news was that with two business strategy/psychology classes, I had more reading on hand than I had the summer before we started at Columbia.

Seriously, I had as many books to read as Noah and Sam combined. For each of the six books, four for the business strategy class and two for the business psychology class, I had to create a brief synopsis and an outline of what I considered to be the most salient points. It was labor intensive…educational…but labor intensive. There were times that I felt myself teetering on the edge of burn out. But one thing always pulled me back. The fact that every night, whether we were in our bus or in a hotel room, I was able to spend at least a few hours co-ed naked wrestling with Sam and Noah. I was a very lucky woman. The one thing that kept me sane was the fact that my husbands and I made love every single night. We also made love after every single concert. At least we did until Fayetteville, when Bubbie and Nikki joined us. We got lucky in that they and Darcy, who had travelled with them, watched the concert then waited and came back with the VIPs, which gave us time for me to ride both of them until we were all completely fulfilled, before they arrived with the group led by Sybo Diaz one of the larger Latin Rangemen. Sybo was joined by Manny in uniform and Zip looking like a fan. I think he was playing Bubbie’s date. I mentally wondered for a second how much of it was pretend. But then any other thoughts flew right out of my head. I actually beat Sam and Puck to our little girl and scooped her up into a huge hug. “Oh, Niks…I’ve missed you so much.” I may have shed a tear, but she looked so cute and I really had missed her so much. She was wearing a black and white sleeveless organza, scuba, handkerchief dress and black leggings with her hair all curled and pulled back in a pretty head band.

“MeDe…” she crooned hugging me tightly back. “I missed you too.” she whispered.

Sybo was doing a great job making sure that none of the non-family VIPs took pictures of our mini-reunion. Bubbie was hugging Noah and Sam. I had to pass Nikki into her Abah’s arms to be able to accept my hug from Bubbie. Then they took a seat on the sofa while we signed autographs and took selfies and otherwise entertained our fans. Thankfully, Fayetteville wasn’t a big enough venue for the promoter to be willing to pay us for our time in attending the after party. Once we were all done at the Cumberland County Crown Coliseum, we grabbed Nik’s and Bubbie’s bags from Tessa and Joe and got them settled in their bunks on our bus. Once we got everyone changed into some comfy lounging clothes, we all huddled together with Nikki, happily wearing her Star Trek uniform pjs, on the couch in the front lounge while Bubbie and Hudson took the chairs.

Nikki was ecstatic. She loved the whole bunk beds in a moving vehicle idea, but as much as she enjoyed that coolness, she had missed us a lot and wanted to share all her adventures from the previous couple of weeks. With no school, and it not yet being time for the math and technology camp, Nikki, Jazmine, Michelle and Marcus would be going to at John Carroll University in Cleveland after the Fourth of July Break. It was the same camp Lauren had gone to every summer for years. Plus too, it was close to the family. The math camp that had first grabbed their interest was all the way in Texas. The fearsome foursome was all atwitter planning for that. The camp didn’t have a uniform, per se, but our little geniuses had all decided that they would spend the entire time in ‘geek shirts’ and shorts. Sam kept going online and finding new ones to order and have shipped to our soon to be campers. He loved finding them the best Superhero or funny science based sayings shirts. He knew all four kids’ sizes by heart…but always ordered a size up because, “Stevie and Stacey grew like weeds every summer. Lil Darlin’, Jazz, and M-n-M’ve probably grown a foot each since the last time we saw them.” Puck and I stopped pointing out that the kids would only be there for fourteen days Manny and his partner would be going with them and they would all be spending the two weekends they were off, with Momma, Daddy and the family in Lima. We wanted them to have a normal camp experience…but they were vulnerable to the psychopath that was still stalking me.

Bubbie Ruth, Kurt and Blaine had been keeping M-N-M entertained when their schedules allowed and the twins’ mother, Elizabeth Ann Taylor…EA to friends, watched over them when their schedules didn’t. Mills and Saul and Amanda and Uncle Ethan all pitched in when they could too. Nikki told us all about how the three friends, often with EJ and Avery, went to museums and trips to the zoo. Apparently, each borough had their own or something. Of course, no matter where they went, they always had their two Rangemen for company. But Manny and Zip never stayed silent and aloof for long. They loved Nikki and EJ and Avery…and I was pretty sure that if he could, Manny would totally kidnap Michelle and Marcus and raise them as his own. He thought they were the funniest kids ever.

The drive from Fayetteville to Charlotte was under three hours long, and Nikki had a million stories to tell and even more opinions to render about our concert and Victoria Monet, our opening act for the Southeast region. And yet when we got to the Sheraton Charlotte Hotel, Nik-Nak was knocked out. She had fallen asleep mid-sentence telling us about the last time Blaine had taken them to the Children’s Museum. We checked in after four on Sunday morning and yet, I was completely unsurprised to see Lester waiting on us in the lobby. Nikki slept through the whole process and her Abah carried her up to the Sheraton Club Level, double room that was her and Bubbie’s respite while we were in Charlotte. After we tucked her in and gave her all the kisses we’d missed, we made our way to our one bedroom suite nearby. This time we were in a promoter booked hotel, so it was just us and our crew and the Rangemen who handled all their own arrangements. I was pretty sure that Hudson had taken care of the arrangements for Ruth and Nik-Nak’s room. At least, I hoped so. I didn’t want to cut into the poor promoter’s profits any more than necessary.

The lobby had been bright and trendy. The suite’s living room dominated by a large deep tan sofa and coordinating arm chairs, console with a massive TV and a work table with two rather comfy looking business chairs. But the bedroom was actively gorgeous. The walls painted a nice shade of ochre. The floor carpeted in a geometric dark gray medium high carpet. The furniture was all darker wood, the bedding all bright, beautiful white. Both of the suites two full bathrooms were nicely appointed too. The larger had a separate bathtub and shower, a nice little water closet and a double vanity. The smaller was more like a traditional hotel bathroom. We were all a little wired once we put our things away and showered. I looked over at my boys…my men. “Hey guys, wanna play a little game?” I whispered huskily.

Puck’s eyes lit up. “What do you have in mind, Sexy Mama?”

I smiled dirtily. “Well, why don’t we have a naughty whisper contest? We whisper all the dirtiest we want to do to each other and the person who holds out from touching themselves or one of the other two the longest gets to have control when we get back in from whatever Hudson has planned for us for today?”

“Hell yeah, Mercy,” Sam breathed gently. He knew what their whispers did to me. Hearing their low honeyed tones talking dirty describing what they wanted to do to me…it was something that never failed to make me wet and achy and wanting. That night was no exception. Sam started and he wove a tale of loving sexual domination…he and Noah tying me over a coffee table. Bound, and blindfolded, my breasts bound as we hadn’t played since before we left Lima. He talked of fucking my mouth and throat to get his cock slick before sliding his dick between my bound breasts, fucking them until he came. All the while, Noah would be fucking my ass and playing with my pussy and Sam’s guitar roughened fingers would be torturing my engorged nipples until I was just one big, massive orgasm. I was pretty proud of my restraint because when he finished, I was wet enough to be uncomfortable…but I hadn’t given in and touched myself.

Noah took his turn next. “So, Sexy Mama…where should I concentrate my fantasy. I like Sammy Boy’s. You love having your tits played with. I love fucking that gorgeous ass of yours. But I think that mine has to be something more. Something we all want, but know it can’t happen for a while yet. Yeah…I know just what I’m gonna tease all three of our asses with.” He grumbled darkly. Then he launched into a thoroughly debauched telling of all the things they would do to me to ensure my pregnancy, when the time finally arrived. Trading me back and forth between the two of them for hours and hours on end. Leaving me in a destroyed bed, so completely full of their combined cum that it gushed out of me with every pulsation of a still orgasming pussy. But hot as that was, he didn’t stop there. He continued to describe all the different ways they would continue seeing to my needs and pleasure as the pregnancy progressed, of accidentally fucking me into labor at the end, because even at thirty-nine weeks, heavily pregnant, they wouldn’t be able to resist my allure. Noah even talked about how they would make sure I was satisfied even when intercourse was prohibited after I gave birth. The way he described sucking my milky breasts…it was almost too much. I never thought of that as erotic…but damn. Then again Noah Puckerman whispering like that could have made the alphabet song sound filthily erotic.

I managed, barely, to resist the temptation to push him to the bed and ride him like I was wearing a cowboy hat...but I did manage. However, I also hadn’t thought of anything to say as I was so enraptured in their tales of teasing and orgasms. They already knew my darkest, my dirtiest and my kinkiest fantasies. Instead, I laid out their strangest kink in my most passion filled whispers. I talked of unbraiding my natural hair and allowing the long, kinky yet softly coarse, dark curls to trail over them from the top of their head to the soles of their feet before I traced the reverse route with my mouth. Only then would I lick and suck my way back to their long, hard cocks…laving the appendage with a nimble tongue before taking one deep into the recesses of my mouth and down my throat while I stroked the other with a fist full of their favorite version of my hair. I would take turns sucking and stroking until they had both anointed my hair with the evidence of their passion. Then…then I told them about how I would restart the process, mounting and riding Noah’s cock while pleasing Sam with my hands, mouth and breasts. When Puck came, balls deep, in my pussy, I would allow him to slip out of me as our other husband moved behind me to take me as I came up on my knees, allowing me to use my mouth and hands and breasts to please our partner. Only when we were completely sated would the back and forth cease.

I never noticed that I had slid my hands over my body more than once as I was talking. I didn’t even notice when I slid my hands into Sam and Noah’s laps and started stroking their erections as I got deeper and deeper into the daydream scenario. I didn’t even notice when Sam and Noah exchanged conversational glances and look above my head or when Sam, acting on those looks started nimbly unbraiding the wealth of winding cornrows Rickey had created the day before we left New York. It was only when, my tale completed, Noah stood and went to the door placing the do not disturb sign out before texting Hudson and Bubbie that we were indisposed until at least three that I realized what was happening outside my head.

Needless to say, I didn’t command anything when we got back that evening. Then again, we didn’t leave the room until it was time for dinner and my ‘story’ had been brought to life with many creative addendums made by my beloved husbands. When we finally showered, they both had to help me wash and condition my hair. It was thick with their cum and a little matted from all our activity. Suffice it to say I wore my hair out in a loud, proud Effie ‘fro when we went to dinner. It felt ridiculously soft between the protein infusion and the fifteen-dollar shampoo and twenty-dollar conditioner that Rickey refused to let me leave his shop without swearing I would use religiously. Of course, Darcy…well her and someone who snapped a picture of me and Sam kissing outside Pisces Sushi Bar & Lounge where we took our family, Crew, Rangemen, drivers and crew for dinner. Anyway, both of them posted a picture of me with my pretty big afro. I was proud of my whole look. Feeling sexy as hell after how we’d spent our afternoon, I’d paired the hair with a curve hugging cutout back petal sleeve royal blue sheath dress that I had copped from a website for under thirty-five bucks and wore with a pair of six hundred and fifty-dollar Alexandre Birman nude, silk ankle wrap sandals. I loved playing with fashion like that. Okay, so maybe I picked those particular shoes mainly because they were the only ones I had with me that didn’t have a super high heel and this sista-gal was walking pretty after five hours of boning. Still, I looked fly.

Dinner was probably very interesting for the chefs and wait staff of Pisces. The hibachi and sushi were both awesome examples of their craft. The cocktails were great, though with Nikki with us, we stopped at one each rather than our usual two. But even on good behavior there were still sixty-plus of us, laughing, joking teasing and experimenting with new foods that we’d not tried before. I knew that a lot of the tour crew was surprised that we took them out with us. I hated doing what I considered to be deceiving them, by letting them think that we were footing the whole bill for the evenings we took them to dinner with us, but Warner had given us a pretty large budget for feeding Lamar and his crew. So much so that we usually got reimbursed for sixty to seventy-five percent of what we spent. Still, the way me and Sam felt about it…we probably would have taken them out with us even if we did have to pay for it out of our own pockets. It wouldn’t have been right to leave them behind. We had paid for the theme park adventure for everyone. It was worth every dime too.

After dinner, we settled up and got kind of ambushed by a few members of the local media. “Mercedes, can we get your statement on this morning’s death of real estate mogul and television personality Donald Trump?” One brave soul shouted out above the other six voices.

I exchanged a look with Sam and one with Noah before replying. “To be truthful, all I can say is that I hope that he is remembered fondly by his family and friends. I didn’t know that he had passed away. Between traveling and resting between our concert last night in Fayetteville and the concert tomorrow night here in Charlotte…we haven’t had a chance to read the news yet today.”

Puck wasn’t near as nice. “So, what happened? Did his heart give out while he was auditioning his next young, foreign trophy wife or did he finally stiff the wrong construction crew?”

Sam scoffed. “Probably the second one…I mean, even if you can stomach the pure dee bullshit that comes out of his mouth…he still looks how he looks.”

One of the reporters expressed his shock. “Sam, you’re supposed to be a southern gentleman…here you are speaking ill of the dead?”

Not a single person there wasn’t surprised when Sam gave a very Mercedes worthy side-eye. “Okay, let’s just leave aside that the ‘man’, and I totally use the term loosely, insulted my wife. Which I can’t really, I see no reason to ignore his insults to this amazing young lady. I don’t-didn’t-know him personally…but what I knew of him…I never liked. He stiffed hard working construction people, craftsmen and even architects and yet made money off those people’s hard work. Then he called himself a successful businessman. He declared bankruptcy multiple times to avoid paying his debts. That’s supposed to be a relief in the hardest of circumstances…something that you do once in your life but even then, only if you ain’t got no other choice. He used it like it was a get outta jail free card. He somehow managed to lose a metric shit-ton of money in casinos in the eighties and nineties, kind of their heyday. He treated women, God’s gift to and partners for, men like disposable playthings…like garbage. He disrespected our nation by spewing all that racist, birther bullshit about our President. I’m not saying that Barack Obama has been perfect, but he’s done more for this country than we had any right to expect with the way he’s been treated. He saved Detroit…he saved our, hell, the entire global economy. He made sure that there was good, decent healthcare for Americans…a lot of ‘em for the first time ever. Who knows what else Obama could have managed if he was less of a nice guy and a little more of a shark and had Congress behind him for more than just those first two years. So, no…I didn’t like Trump when he was just a run of the mill welcher. I sure as hell didn’t like him when I was old enough to understand that he didn’t treat women right. I pretty much hated him when I realized that he was racist on top of all his other horrific qualities. But now because he dropped dead, I’m supposed to lie and act like he was some saint. Yeah…Naw. One day I’ve gotta meet my maker and I sure ain’t gonna do it with a lie about that piece of nothing staining my soul.”

None of us knew it, but Darcy had been recording his entire diatribe. She posted it to YouTube, titled ‘Sam Evans’ Official Statement on Donald Trump’. It went viral. Seriously, amazingly viral. It went so viral that the next night when we were getting ready for our Charlotte show, Hudson came running into our dressing room without even doing that knock then enter thing. “Phone… Presss…President Obama…is on the phone.” Her hand was shaking as she held our ‘business’ iPhone out towards us.

“Quit bullshiting, Hud.” Puck shot back as Dee sprayed his face with the stage foundation and powder combo spray.

“That must be the incorrigible Mr. Puckerman.” A distinguished and immediately recognizable voice came through the speaker.

“Uh…Uh…sorry Mr. President, Sir.” Puck snapped to attention like he’d actually gone into the military or something. Sam wasn’t any better. In fact, given the fact that he was saluting the cell phone, he would probably have rated as worse.

“Well, now, I have to say that you, uh, wouldn’t be the first person to not quite believe that it was the President on the phone. I felt the same way when President Carter called me upon my election in two-thousand and eight.”

“I can see how that would be awe-inspiring.” Sam said with a small smile.

Obama smiled. I could tell. “Yes, Mr. Evans that is exactly the right word. Now, I understand that you have a show to prepare for and I do not want to keep you from your fans.”

“They can wait.” I blurted out, finally able to get a word past the shock and surprise making me look like a goldfish.

He laughed. I made President Obama laugh. That was a huge accomplishment to me. I was proud of it. “Ms. Jones, did you get the card I sent you all after your Grammy win?”

I nodded then realized that he couldn’t see me so I forced myself to speak again. “Yes Sir. I had it framed. My Grandmother may have re-appropriated it though. She loves you…voted for you both times.”

He chuckled again. “Well, I guess that she will have to be your guest when you three come and visit me.”

“Whosaywhatsthatnow?” I babbled stupidly.

“I was calling to invite KAMA to take part in a celebration of American Creativity at an In Performance at the White House this coming October.” He said in that calm, sure way that made him so popular on the international stage.

I nodded too overwhelmed to speak. It was Sam who answered instead. “We would be honored, Sir.”

“Of course, I mean, it’s not like we’re going to say no to the President of the United States of America.” Puck tried for humor.

“You could say no…it is a choice that is available to you.” Obama returned in a teasing manner.

“Not if we want to ever sleep with our wife or be acknowledged by our parents again in this life time- Sir.” Sam admitted without rancor.

Obama’s deep, genuine laughter made us all smile. “I uh, I understand where you are coming from Mr. Evans. I will have Michelle’s assistant contact your manager with the dates and to formalize the details. On a more personal note, let me say Ms. Jones, I would like to thank you for your message of body image positivity and of waiting for love rather than sharing your body with all and sundry. As a father of two young women, it is nice for my daughters and yours to have a role model in popular culture that understands the importance of loving one’s self no matter what. Mr. Evans, thank you very for your eloquent defense of myself and my administration yesterday. It is nice to have someone show appreciation for what I have tried to accomplish. Mr. Puckerman, I know better than most how much guff you have received since you’ve chosen to speak out against police violence and excessive use of force. Thank each of you for all you are doing to try and make this nation better through your music, words and deeds.”

Then boom…he was gone. Sam, Puck and I looked at each other in total disbelief. “Did that really just happen?”

“Oh, it totally just happened.” Nikki replied. She sounded almost as awe struck as we were. I was completely and totally jazzed. We let Trina and Dee finish up their work then we went out there and ROCKED the hell out of Charlotte. We were feeling so patriotic that we started the night with the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ instead of our usual opening number. Granted it was the Hendrix version, but the crowd stood with hands over hearts for the whole thing. Unfortunately, Charlotte was a big enough city that the promoter paid us a cool millie to attend the after party, so we’d agreed. We did get Nik-Nak ready for bed and into her Bunk in our bus with Tessa, Joe and Zip watching over her before we went and spent six hours laughing, dancing and schmoozing at the Underground. Bubbie was not even ready to go when things got closed down. She’d been the bell of the ball. Then it was back to the buses with our asses and we slept until we got to Atlanta.

Atlanta was a different kettle of fish from our usual tour stops. The promoter had been happy to contribute towards our lodging and yet leave the actual booking of the hotel to our staff. Hudson had done a great job getting a deal at the Wingate by Wyndham hotel a few miles from the venue which allowed us to keep everyone together. The hotel had laundry facilities and Dry Cleaning…plus it had parking for our buses and trucks and it had meeting rooms where we could practice and with the necessary accoutrements for us to have a Team Meeting, which we hadn’t managed since we got on the road. With so much available that benefited us, Hudson had arranged things so that we would be in Atlanta until the morning of our Columbia South Carolina concert. The trucks and the tour crew would head out around six in the morning with the bulk of us not leaving until about ten. That would give them the time they needed and we’d get there well in time for our sound and lighting checks.

We got checked in and Sam carried Nikki up to her and Bubbie’s room which adjoined ours. Despite having only had four hours of sleep on the bus, we only had time to shower and change before we needed to meet Hudson, Bubbie, Darcy, Lester and Lamar for the Team meeting. Hudson had us up and running in a small meeting room. I knew that the hotel was awesome and we had made the right choice the second we walked in for our meeting. Waiting on us on a side buffet, there were coffee and bagels and bacon. The seven of us made like locusts at that table. We sat at a table facing a wall that had been blank when we entered the room, but Hudson soon had three ‘screens’ up, showing our New York Team members, Haja, Brantley, Ethan, Daniel, Kurt, Grant and Mills. Our Lima Team…Gwen, Antwan and whichever of our parents could get there. That morning it was just Dad and Gabby. I was a little surprised at the person on the third screen. Madeline St. Clair had made arrangements to Skype in from LA.

“Can I go first, because I have huge news?” Maddie said as soon as we’d all exchanged pleasantries, including everyone wishing Darcy a happy belated birthday. She had turned twenty-three the same day as the Fayetteville concert. We had given her a thousand-dollar universal gift card…in addition to the five-thousand-dollar bonus she earned in Charlotte. In her new employment contract, which she’d signed for her second year as our social media manager, there was a brand-new stipulation. Every time we went viral or our social media trends top five for the day, she got a bonus in leu of a commission, which would have been a little harder to assess. It worked, she had us trending at number one at least once a week. I shook off those thoughts and paid attention to the meeting in progress.

No one had had any problem with letting Madeline speak first. That would allow her to say her piece and return to her business quickly. So, she continued. “I know you guys have been busy so I don’t know if you realize that we listed the Mar Vista house on Monday. I listed it based on the appraisal since there are no houses in the area comparable, with a finished basement. It was listed at one point three million. We’ve got eleven offers on the table ranging from asking up to two-point-three-five million.”

“What the hell?” Noah blurted out. “Why so much?”

Madison smirked. “The house is fully remodeled and updated. It has a pool and a famous LA scandal attached to it. I knew it would sell for above list…I just wasn’t expecting an offer to come in for a million over listing. Now, the highest offer did come with a request to buy the furniture that Kendra staged it with, but she said that you could sell it as is and it would barely bite into your profit at all.”

Sam and I exchanged a long look. Neither one of us cared why they were offering so much. We just wanted the place off our hands. “So, sell it to the highest bidder.” I finally said and Sam and Puck quickly agreed. “Maybe our bad luck house will be good luck for them.”

“I’ll let them know immediately. I can fax you the paperwork, but you’ll need to have them notarized and overnight them back to me.” Ethan chimed in and asked her to send him the purchase contract and the buyer’s information so that he could check everything out just to be careful. “Not a problem. I’m using that settlement statement you drafted for Mills and Francesca. So, it should be copasetic.” Maddie told him with a smile before signing off.

Hudson assured us that she would make sure that things ran smoothly as far as we were concerned. While we were on the subject of real estate, Mills chimed in with some information on the New York real estate proceedings. “Alright, the floor over our heads is now legally yours. From what I understand from Maddie, your profit from her sale just paid you back for the purchase price of the property management office space. The previous owners are paying for the demolition and the crew chief says that will be finished by the end of next month. Sam, your father signed off on your blueprints and Shelby Johnson is a go to do the new build out. Her points of contact will be primarily Haja and Kurt again. Soon as she finishes, I’ll get you a tenant for the rental space. I’ve got a few properties that I think would make a good showcase flat here in the city…but I still think you’ll want to table that until you come home in the fall. None of these places are going to hold that long and even for a place just to hold parties and the like, I refuse to help you buy anything sight unseen.”

“I’m good with waiting. We just wanted you to keep your eye out in case there was something that we shouldn’t let slip through our fingers.” Sam said appeasingly. Bubbie gave me a look. She swore up and down that Mills and Saul would be making an announcement sooner rather than later. Primarily because Auntie Millsie’s moods were swinging like a pendulum. I was personally waiting on some other signs. Mills and Francesca were busy enough that she could just be moody because she is so tired. Still, everyone but Saul was walking on eggshells with her. None of the rest of her could kiss her until she forgot she was mad, so we were just careful.

The next report came from me, Sam and Noah as we brought everyone up to speed on the phone call we’d received the night before, before our Charlotte show. There were squeals, sighs and happy exclamations of pride and joy…and that was just Daddy’s reaction. Gabby’s was even better. She showed where Sam got his babbling in times of shock from. It was hilarious. When everyone had expressed their disbelief and happiness, Haja took over from there; the First Lady’s staffers had already sent him the particulars and Ethan the contract for the performance. We wouldn’t get paid, of course, but we did get a nice little tax break for waiving our performing fee. Plus, we’d be performing in the White House in front of the Black First Family. I’d have sold my left tit for that honor let alone comp the government a fee that we often waived for the right cause anyway.

Once we finished discussing the impossible to believe, once in a lifetime opportunity that I would forever be grateful to Sam for earning us…I was convinced that it was Sam’s words that brought us to the President’s mind as a possible artist for that event…Hudson and Lamar took over to talk about the coming weeks of the tour. Lamar went first and handled the overreaching things. “So, the way this next week works is that we’re here in the ATL until Friday morning. After the concert Friday night, KAMA, the band, background dancers, background singers and a few members of the road crew are off until the following Wednesday. The drivers and most of the road crew will stay in Columbia and drive down to Charleston on Wednesday morning. After Charleston, we’ll have Florida before we do the second Georgia stop and a special mini-concert at the Officer’s Club on Fort Benning and then back to back Alabama concerts. Everyone has the Fourth of July weekend off…well except the drivers and a skeleton road crew. Those who want to can fly themselves home. Everyone will come back together in Mississippi. We have three back to back stops, Jackson Mississippi, New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The Fourth will be the last real break until we wrap the main body of the tour in September.” He finalized.

Hudson then took over. “We’re using this week as something of a break. While we are busy in this meeting, Beverly and Joseph are taking the chance to get all the wardrobe pieces that have worn during the tour all sent out to get cleaned. We’ve let everyone else know that they can do their laundry here as well. At two we are all due at a local salon and spa called Three-13. They have services from Mani-Pedis to massages, body treatments and hair and everything. We’ll be there until eight, and then we’ll have dinner at Atlantic Seafood Company. Tomorrow, you guys are in practices all day with sound check at four and the concert starts at seven. Thursday, you can all sleep in, and then we’re scheduled to leave for Six Flags over in Georgia at noon. We’re there until ten…then it’s back to the hotel to sleep and we head to Columbia on Friday.”

“You’re taking everyone to Six Flags again...isn’t that getting kind of expensive?” Gabby pointed out gently.

Hudson smirked as she often did when she managed a great feat that she was very proud of. “Well, I managed to work out a deal with their corporate headquarters. We got seventy-five total full price Six-Flag season passes…they comped us Flash Passes for each one and gave us a reduced price on the dining passes. The free Flash Passes saved us more than the season passes cost and best of all the season passes are accepted at every Six-Flags in the continental US of A.”

“Damn, Hudson…how did you work that?” Daniel asked surprised.

Our PA blushed. “I just counted on Mercedes, Sam and Noah to be themselves and be willing to sign autographs and take pictures with their fans. Once one person posts the pics…”

“The park gets a huge bump in regular priced ticket sales. Those people, and even season pass holders, come and spend money in droves just hoping that they will run into you guys. Even if they never do, they had a fun day.” Daniel finished for her. “Genius, Hudson, pure genius.”

Darcy offered to take it one step further. “Thursday, before we leave, I could send out something on Twitter saying we’re heading there.”

I wrinkled up my nose. “Let’s wait until we get there. That way we won’t be mobbed before we can even get into the park. I mean, Nik-Nak’s with us…I want to make sure that we can have fun with her too.”

Darcy looked thoughtful. “That’s perfect. I’ll post a picture of the three of you hugging Nickelodeon in the park, her face totally not seeable, and post it asking that everyone respect Nickelodeon’s privacy if they want to take pictures of you guys.”

“Not a bad idea. We can even give them times to meet us certain places when Nikki is on a ride or something.” Sam suggested.

Gabby looked thoughtful. “Isn’t Cassidy a local? You guys should go ahead and tell her, she might have nieces or nephews she’d like to take along…don’t you get a certain amount of friend tickets with each pass?”

Puck nodded. “Good idea Angel Mom…I know she has like two here, and I think two or three in Charleston…or the other way around. Hud, can you go ahead and text her now so they can get their shit together?”

With that settled, Gwen took over. “I’ve found the perfect property here in Lima like you asked. Three stories, forty-five units…the apartments were built before any of you were born and desperately need remodeling. They are currently operating at only ten percent occupancy. They are asking one point two two five million, but they have been listed for almost a year.”

“Oh, then go in with an offer of nine hundred thousand and let them think they talked you up to a million.” Mills suggested. “What kind of monthly income can you expect at full capacity?”

“A little above twenty-five thousand a month. With the pricing table Sam approved for Lima.”

Sam rolled his eyes. Gwen wanted to charge Dayton rents in little Lima…it wasn’t going to work and even if it did, it wasn’t what Sam was hoping to do in our home town. Mills saw something via the connection and rushed on. “That’s not bad for the area. Rename it, set reasonable rents and in five years if Lima is still booming like it currently is, you can update it a little bit more, rebrand it and increase the rents some more.” 

Gwen made some notes on the suggestion and we moved on. Ethan had some interesting news. We’d gotten the money from the TMZ settlement. It was fifteen million dollars, but we all agreed that it was more about the principal involved than anything else. The National Enquirer has offered a settlement of fifty-five million dollars, about a tenth of our original lawsuit ask. “We’ll never be able to disclose the amount of the settlement, but it is as good as them admitting guilt. Besides we really want to go after the people at VIVID. They are even deeper pockets than the tabloid.”

Puck had a really good thought on that news. “Okay, take it and put half into our Human Resources accounts to pay the new staff for the property-management firm, and put the other half and the money from TMZ into an endowment to fund a legal aid fund. Give money to people who need help getting justice for shit, like the parents of the Mike Brown and Tamir Rice…people who really were wronged and can’t afford attorneys like you guys. We can do the same when Fox News and the two douche canoes settle too.”

“That’s a good idea, Noah.” Gabby praised him. He blushed so cute.

There wasn’t much left for us to discuss after that. Daniel got three new clients, friends of Jesse’s. Ethan was in talks with P!nk and Corey to be their attorney. Darcy had too much work between us, Rangeman and a few foundations she was helping…for pretty much free. Haja and Brantley were seriously loaded out. After experiencing them first hand, three of our opening acts had signed with the two of them. Even though we hadn’t asked for it at all, they were having Ethan draw them up a sort of a lease, that basically meant we would keep their base salaries and just pay them their already agreed upon commissions and bonuses in exchange for letting them utilize their office spaces in our office for all their clients. Ethan and Daniel had made a similar offer…but I had leverage over both of them…they recanted it very quickly. Things were going great for our camp and I couldn’t have been happier. After an intense hour and a half, the meeting finally wrapped up and we were able to catch a nap before we got back up, showered, moisturized and got dressed for a nice relaxing spa day.

Yep, our lives were hectic, crazy intense and seriously tiring. But we managed to keep ourselves together and enjoying every single moment.

 

Here 2AM Version (Alessia Cara)  
Puck PoV

There were things I liked about spa days…primarily the back-exfoliation treatments and pedicures. But mainly they were Cedes’ thing. I’d been to a lot of spas around the country since we started the wild and crazy ride called stardom…but nothing prepared me for Three-13 Salon and Spa. The building was pretty fucking huge with a big ass hot pink sign. When we got inside, we quickly realized why it was so big. That place was serious about its shit. They had beautification down to a science for real. We were greeted by the owner and his partners and their right-hand woman. Lester Crowell was one cool dude. He’d had two heart transplants and was still kicking. He dressed like a rock star…okay an eighties rock star, but a rock star nonetheless. And given the way his tone changed when he introduced his partners and his ‘partners’, I was pretty sure that he and the later kind of his partners were his lovers. One of them, Traci, she was cute in a surgically enhanced kind of way. Her face was pretty in a fey kind of way, but she’d definitely had her boobs and booty enhanced. Still, before I got with Sam and Cede…I’d have boned her.

I zoned a little bit after the original meet and greet. I knew I wasn’t getting my hair did, and the first thing they did was separate us to get information about everyone’s hair and what hairstylist they should be assigned. So, while they were doing all that, I started looking around a bit. There was a sign for something called Angels of Life that was distracting the hell out of me. I must have been zoned out even further than I thought because I didn’t hear Lester come up behind me. “When I was thirteen,” Lester voice broke into my silent reverie. “I was diagnosed with IHSS, idiopathic hypertrophic sub-aortic stenosis. At forty, I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Emory put me on the transplant list for the first time by the time I was 43. By then, I barely had the strength to walk or talk. There is something about laying in the same hospital where the same disease took the life of your beloved mother only two floors above your head that gives you a reason to get your ass up.” he chuckled mirthlessly. “I will never understand where I found the determination and strength to continued working during my illness and right up until I received the 1am call from my Emory transplant coordinator on April fifteenth, Tax Day, two thousand. I was blessed to receive a healthy and strong heart and after a, faster than I thought possible, recovery I was able to do things I had never done before and others it had been years since I could even think to try. Then nine years later, my transplanted heart developed what is actually a pretty common threat to all transplanted organs, chronic rejection, similar to coronary artery disease. The doctors told me I was at high risk for a massive heart attack and my only option would be another heart transplant. I got the second call at a quarter to six in the morning on December third of two thousand and ten. I was given a healthy & strong heart, my 3rd heart. This time, when I was lying there all I could do was reflect on the grace, fortune and protection I had been blessed with. In that very moment, it became my mission to make a difference in the lives of those touched by transplants…that is when Angels of Life was born.”

“Whoa.” I breathed. I’d never really known anyone with MAJOR health problem like that. Even Artie, he was in his chair because of a car accident, not illness. “That’s amazing.”

He gave me a charming grin. “Every year, weekends all through August and September we hold a bake sale here and all the proceeds from it got to paying for a hair and fashion show with a silent and live auction. The proceeds from that are all given to Georgia Transplant Foundation. They help people all throughout the state of Georgia who are undergoing the transplant journey. So far, we’ve donated a hundred sixty thousand, three hundred and thirteen dollars. The goal this year is to add at least another hundred thousand to that total.”

“What can I do to help?” I heard myself ask.

Mr. Crowell looked a little surprised. “Let me get Christina over here and we’ll find out. Thank you.” So, we grabbed his right-hand, Christina, and I grabbed Sam and Cede, Hud and Darcy and we worked it out. Just as we were settled on giving them a package for our Tijuana, Mexico concert that included four VIP ticket packages, hotel and flight, plus four autographed tee-shirts…the tee shirts we would leave with them to give to the winner of the package the night of the auction…a short, glasses wearing chick came in.

Christina smiled hugely; like the look was a little scary it was so predatory. “Rita, I forgot you were coming in today. Come and meet our new friends. They just gave an amazing package for the Angels of Life live auction.” We were introduced to the Director of Communications of the very organization we’d been discussing.

“Wow, Christina, that’s wonderful. I didn’t think you ever forgot anything.” She teased obviously comfortable with Lester and Christina both. “Mr. Evan, Ms. Friedman, Ms. Jones, Ms. Lewis, Mr. Puckerman…nice to meet you all. Congratulations on your Grammys and diamond record and wow…I’m meeting Grammy award winning music artists and I look like a schlub.”

“Ah…I’ll forgive a fellow Jew.” I joked.

Rita looked a little surprised. “How’d you know?” She asked curiously. “It’s rare for people to know right off the bat.”

“My Bubbie’s maiden name was Howard too. So, I assumed.” I said honestly. “It really sounds like you guys are doing good work.”

“Thank you. We service anywhere from eighteen hundred to twenty-two thousand transplant patients and living donors and their families every year.” She told us with a smile. “One of my co-workers…she runs GTF’s fundraising program…she is a HUGE fan of you guys. Our office is constantly filled with your music. I mean, I like you guys too…but she goes above and beyond in fan-girliness.”

“Is she coming tomorrow night?” Cedes asked her.

Rita shook her head. “No, Illy tried winning some on the radio…but she couldn’t afford to buy enough for her, her husband and her kids.”

I smirked, we could so fix that. “Hey, didn’t Massey say his family wasn’t going to make it after all?” I asked. We’d held four tickets that were decent seats but not spectacular back for one of the tour crew guys. But his brother and sister-in-law and their children weren’t going to be able to come for whatever reason.

Sam nodded. “Yeah, but rather then leaving them at Will Call, why don’t we…Hudson, is there a way that we can have them couriered over to their offices for her. Let Rita and her co-workers see Miss Illy’s face when she gets the tickets.”

“That would be awesome.” Rita laughed. “I’ll take a picture and post it on line.”

Darcy and she started talking seriously above our head in their super-social media babble. But they ultimately came to some sort of accord and the next time they had an event…and we did it for pretty much all of them…every time Rita tweeted out the details for one of their events, we simply retweeted it and shared it on our site. Plus…when we could we sent things for their auctions. That day, for their coming Dawgs for Kids event, we gave them a package similar to what we’d given Lester for Angels of Life and a framed autographed picture, complete with a certificate of authenticity. The Georgia Transplant Foundation’s auction four pack of tickets was for our Barbados concert. I felt good about the good we did in the first half hour of our spa day. Then Lester introduced me to his sister Leslie who gave me a whole head facial…seriously…it was way cooler than it sounded. Then, Sam took my place in her chair and her protégé Magy gave me a chest and back facial too. I had to say I loved not having itchy back or back-ne for over a year. After that, Cede, Sam and I had a hot stone, full, hour long thruple’s massage. Then me and Sam got our feet done. He went and got a haircut, and I went and joined the Dam Bros and got my face waxed. That was all the stuff I would even consider getting so I went and found Nikki. She’d gotten a mani-pedi and was currently getting her hair done. She looked adorable. Her stylist’s name was Lilia and she had a purple streak at the front of her dark hair. “Your wife had us give her a Repechage seaweed thermal mask treatment…which is an amazing deep Conditioner…with her. Her hair is so pretty and thick.” The stylist cooed. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to Nikki or Cede. The case could have been made for either. “Now, I’m giving Princess Nikki a trim and then we’ll blow her dry with a diffuser, give some definition to her curls with the finish and she’ll be all done.”

“Great. Thank you.” I told her with a smile. As she finished her work with Nikki, I watched all the many processes going on around the room. The place really did have their shit down to an exact science. It was kind of like there was an assembly line deal. The youngest looking people washed and conditioned the hair before the hairstylists got them or after the colorists were done with them. Then there were people who handled blowing hair dry before it was fully styled. All around the salon our people were getting different services. I noticed that Santana and Tina had decided to get extensions to bring the closer to Xena’s amazing length. The stylists were even able to shape up Simeon, Lamar and Adams’ and a couple of other brothers in the crew’s, fades. It took me a while to find Cede, she was sitting at the station of a younger black woman with a very short, very blonde afro getting her hair braided into an intricate design that was pretty enough to wear out without a wig but small and tight enough to wear under the wigs as needed.

I’d thought that six hours was overkill…but I’d not realized that for as many services as we each got and as many people as we had, it was actually really good. Granted, we’d had to use the black card to pay the bill, but everyone was happy and Cede was looking really, really relaxed so it was worth it. When we got to the Atlantic Seafood Company restaurant, Devon, Tonya, Kevon and Tricie were there waiting on us. Nikki was off like a shot to get picked up by her tallest uncle. She loved riding either Kev, Dev or Benton’s shoulders. It made her feel like she was on top of the world.

Dinner was fucking awesome. Even the rankest of the Roadies had left Three-13 looking pretty damn fly so there may have been some strutting. We had a great meal, good company, Dev, Tonya, Kev and Tricie, who Niks had to sit next to, to talk math all evening, they brought us up to speed on what was happening in their lives. Then after dinner the elder sibs joined us as we took Nikki to Barnes and Noble and Sprawl-Mart up the street because she’d killed her last Sudoku book and needed more. Patrice and Nikki were huddled together, pouring over them to see which ones were challenging enough. Yeah, I got bored waiting. So, we got her one of every book the two stores had. Hopefully that would hold her for a while. While we were in Sprawl-Mart, we may or may not have stocked back up on some things like condoms and toothpaste and the like. Sam decided that he wanted to grab a sketch pad and some decent quality art pencils and such. We all left there with way more than we meant to grab. But it was late enough that there weren’t a ton of people in the store so, even with the looky-loos and those brave enough to ask for autographs and selfies, we still made it back to the hotel well before midnight. We helped Niks with her shower and Mercedes read her another chapter of the Potter book they were on. Then it was kisses all around and we left her and Bubbie, who was rocking a ‘sombre’ look that took her natural dark locks down to fiery red at the tips. It was really gorgeous and seemed so damn Bubbie; I couldn’t help but take a pic and send it to the family.

The next morning, it was back to work. We were awake and watching the morning news shows by eight. Informed, showered and dressed by nine and on our way down to breakfast shortly after that. Our trip to Sprawl-Mart made a radio show where they called it Hashtag Parenting for Real. Having to make a late night run to the store for things to keep a kid entertained while on a road trip was apparently a thing that happened to a lot of parents. It was picked up by the local news outlets. But other than that, the only thing everyone was talking about was still the death of Donald Jonathan Trump. It was something of a scandal. He had always said that his friendship with Jerry Epstein didn’t include sharing sexual proclivities. But he’d died in bed with a young model from a country whose name I couldn’t pronounce, but it was part of the former Soviet Bloc. Her visa claimed she was eighteen…but it had been determined that she was not near that old. In fact, she wasn’t old enough to drive. Then as if that weren’t enough…reports were surfacing that not only had he died having a hell of a lot less money than he’d ever admitted to in life, but he’d basically cut everyone out of his will except Ivanka and her kids and his youngest son…the one he had with that Eastern European nude model I used to beat it to way back in the day. Yup…nothing at all for the two understudies for American Psycho the Musical and nothing for the younger daughter either. Bubbie had met him more than once. She was pretty sure that he would’ve loved being notorious for a while.

We spent the morning getting our bodies, minds and voices ready for the concert while Bubbie, Tessa, Joe, Darcy and Lester, who was seriously wrecking shop on the field Rangemen, along with Manny and Zip took Nikki to the Georgia Aquarium. Lunch was delivered to the amphitheater by Panera and after that, we all adjourned to the dressing rooms while the roadies and techies did their jobs. There were showers had by all the Band, Crew and us ourselves before the sound and lighting checks. Then it was hair and makeup and clothing time while Victoria and Cassidy did theirs. Then we did a short run through with everyone to make sure they remembered the song lineup for the night. There was a prayer, Cede led it that time…then before we knew it, we were rolling out onto the stage and getting the crowd hyped up before we went into our first song. The night was boss. Like seriously. KAMA and GTF were both trending thanks to the video Rita had posted on YouTube showing her co-worker’s reaction to our gifts. In addition to the tickets we’d sent four backstage passes, some tee-shirts, hoodies and autographed copies of our CDs and SongBird. They loved our choices of covers. Atlanta felt like an R&B town, so we’d let Santana out of the back for ‘Fairy Tales’. Then later she and Cede gave them ‘The Boy is Mine’ and the Dam Bros gave them ‘Adorn’. Then during the ‘hot as fuck encore’, me and Sam had them panties droppin’ to our version of ‘Freak ‘N You’. It was a damn good concert. After the concert, Sam and I fucked the hell out of our wifey in the shower before getting presentable. We got lucky that we managed to get finished and dressed before the Elder Sibs came back with Bubbie and Niks. None of us were surprised that Cassidy came back with her family. They were in the same group as the radio winners so we didn’t get to talk to them as much as we’d have liked. They seemed nice though. Her niece and nephew had me rolling. There were a multitude of selfies taken with that group.

The next group contained the lady from the foundation. That whole family was tall. Like she was a big, beautiful, black woman, maybe a size sixteen…but she was also closer to six feet than five. Her husband had a bright smile…but something told me that if he wasn’t smiling he would definitely look like he could bite the head off animals. He was fucking tall and built like Benton Jones, just the light skinned version. Their kids were stupid tall too. A boy and a girl and neither of them were shorter than their mother. Then come to find out they were eleven and twelve. I just…couldn’t. The boy was twelve and looked at least fifteen…and the daughter, she was adorable in a way that screamed she was going to be a beauty when she was older. So, I had Hudson slip the dad one of Rangeman’s cards and I told him that if he needed to hire them for her dates in a few years, I would totally pay for it. I would want someone to do the same for me if Nikki or Beth were eleven and already had curves. We also had Hudson slip them a gift card for the restaurant we’d had dinner at the night before and an envelope for the development officer of the foundation. We’d done a little more research and they did some incredible work. We knew that that ten grand wouldn’t help a whole lot of people, but they joined our charitable giving list so they would get one of those checks every quarter. So, we could feel like we were doing something to help.

There was one more group after Mrs. Illy’s group and then we were taken to a club a few miles away in Buckhead called Sanctuary. Again, we were met by the Elder Sibs. I hadn’t even realized that Tonya and Patrice were dressed for a night on the town more than a concert. They looked good, but, in her figure hugging black, one shoulder, ruffled romper and super high stilettos, Sexy Mama looked hot like fire. Cede clowned them for clubbing on a work night. But they just teased her right back that at least they had real jobs. That was becoming a running joke among the Elder Sibs, how we didn’t have real jobs and still made a mint. It was a decent club. We had fun for a while. With Tonya and Tricie there it gave me and Sam two more safe souls we could hit the floor with. That was always nice. We stayed as long as we were contractually obligated to stay…four hours. Then we said good night to the Elder Sibs, who were making the very best of a night out, and were finally able to head back to our hotel.

The next morning, a very, very, very excited Nikolette had us up with the freaking chickens. But her excitement was really, really catchy. So, we got up and dug out shorts, tennis shoes and shirts. We showered, lotioned and got dressed. Sexy Mama was looking fly as hell in a pair of short, khaki shorts and layered white, bright teal and purple tank tops. Both of the bottom ones gave her extra support added to her fucking sexy ass, sports bra. You could look at her and see fading evidence of our nips and sucks from the past few nights. But she also looked bright and fresh and happy as hell. Sammy Boy, like me, was rocking khaki cargo pants…those fashion blogs could kiss my ass, they made my life easier. Hudson had already put together our backpack with sunscreen, wallets, sunglasses cases, cell phones…pretty much everything we needed, including swimwear and flip-flops to wear on water rides. Damn, she was fucking efficient. She looked nice, too in a pair of longer olive-green shorts and a darker ivory cap-sleeved tee-shirt. I checked out my little girl, she was wearing denim shorts and a red tee shirt that read TO infinity sign AND BEYOND on the front in white. Bubbie’s shorts were the same color as Cedes’ but the same length as Hudson’s. Her purple fitted tee shirt had a melting Rubik’s cube on it. Like Nik-Nak’s her hair was pulled up into a curly ponytail and they both had hats attached to the belt loops of their pants. 

When we went down for breakfast, even if it more than two hours before we were supposed to leave, everyone was already down there with their stuff, ready to go, even all the non-Nikki-adjacent Rangemen. I was surprised to see the Elder Sibs had taken a PTO day each to join us. That was pretty damn awesome. Apparently, as long as they had been in the area, they still hadn’t made it to the amusement park. So, Hudson being tremendous, she made magic happened and once we were all fed and watered, the fifteen seater-vans were there and we were on our way. The ride over was silly fun, we were singing and joking and just having a ball. We even got Nik-Nak to sing with us and she tended not to around a lot of people, even though she had a really pretty little voice. Getting to the park took less time than I thought it would, barely thirty minutes and we were there.

The morning passed really quickly. There were a lot of rides and activities just for kids. So, we let Niks do those first. Then she wanted a caricature of the four of us and another of her and Bubbie and then one of all five of us together. The Elder Sibs got their own couple caricatures too. But me, Sam and Sexy Mama decided that we did enough pics…we didn’t need the caricature too. She got a henna tattoo and she and Cede got matching face painting. Then we went on the ‘kids Nikki’s size must be accompanied by an adult’ rides. We had lunch and did the souvenir buying thing, Hudson manifested an empty backpack from somewhere for all our purchases, then she, Bubbie and Niks went to play in the Metropolis Games area while the Elder Sibs, Sam, Cede and I went on a bunch of coasters.

We went backwards from Metropolis Park, starting with the Superman’s Ultimate Flight and not stopping until we were all the way back to the Georgia Cyclone. The Cyclone was older and it was the Ike Turner of the parks coasters. It beat the hell out of our legs. Devon and Kevon’s legs barely fit in the available space. And Cedes’ hips didn’t actually fit in the seat. But even with all of that, we had a great time. In the lines, as we waited, we gave autographs and took selfies and other pictures. Everyone was pretty nice and polite. There were plenty of tweens who almost squealed and passed out when they saw us. People assumed that since they were with us and were big ass Black men, Dev and Kev must have been football players or something and they would ask for their autographs too. Their reactions were hilarious. Tonya and Tricie clowned their asses hard. I laughed so hard in line for the Goliath, I damn near pissed myself. On a summer Thursday, the park had been pretty empty when we got there, but by the time we’d stopped riding for lunch, the place was all kinds of packed.

We met everyone for dinner at Dee Jay’s Diner. Then, full and happy, we changed and headed to Hurricane Harbor. We were still soaked when we left the park that night. But the HUGE smile on Nikki’s face made me feel like I was walking on a cloud instead of a fucking boat load of hills. That was one hilly theme park. It was kind of ridic. But then again, the way Sexy Mama’s tits looked when she was breathing hard from the combination of heat and sixty-degree angle hillside was so totally worth it. The ride back to the hotel was a hell of a lot quieter than the ride out. Cede basically had to get into the shower with Nikki to get her clean…that was one tired little Poppet. Sam braided her hair while I held her after she was dry and in her pjs. She slept through all of it. But the smile on her face told a story beyond her exhaustion.

When we got to our room, love was made and we were out like lights. The next morning, we got up, packed up and had our asses checked out and on the buses by the eleven AM check out time. We just ate on the bus, there was always cereal, microwave oatmeal and breakfast bars and shakes on our buses and we were technically running a little bit behind. Thankfully, it was only a little more than a three-hour drive to South Carolina’s capital city. When we got there, Cede, Tana…all of us singers, were nursing our throats better. Coasters are fun, but they are hell on your throat. The thing I loved about the southeast regional stops was that other than Atlanta and Miami, our stage clothes were super casual. That night when we opened the show, Sexy Mama was in a pair of heeled Tims, a pair of denim booty shorts, and layered tank tops, the top one was black and was clearly a Potter shirt. It read What Would Hermione Do? The ladies who had her back were similarly attired, except Tina’s shirt had Jubilee from the X-Men on it blowing a power filled kiss. Santana’s had Death complete with a scythe on the front holding a book and it said, ‘Grim Reader’s Book Club’. Xena’s was, unsurprisingly, a Vampirella tank.

Me and Sam had it even easier, jeans long for me shorts for Sam, boots and I was in a vintage Nirvana tee and Sam was in a Raglan shirt with the four Sith Lords on the front arranged like they were Queen from the Bohemian Rhapsody video. Our backing men were dressed almost exactly like Sammy Boy. Navy blue camo cargo shorts and raglan tees. Adam’s shirt was very similar to Sam’s except it had different versions of Joker doing the whole Mug shot thing. His brother’s was all about the different incarnations of the Bat Insignia over the years and Arjun’s had Wonder Woman on the front of his. Oh, and their Tims were black like mine over tan like Sam’s. The male back ground dancers were in the Tims that matched Sam’s. They got to wear black cargo shorts with their black tank tops. Joseph’s was almost my favorite. It simply said, ‘Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile’. But Jax’s was pretty awesome too. It was a white on black picture of the Winter Solider…Sam loved it. Mike’s had, funnily enough, a Joker kind of thing on the front. Simeon’s was just a tank top version of the tee shirt he’d worn at South by Southwest. He found the whole ‘Straight Outta the Closet’ thing hilarious.

Their female counterparts were dressed just the same as Tana, Tina and Xena. Black tank tops, denim booty shorts and tan Tims…though their shoes weren’t the heeled versions and they were a lighter tan rather than brown. Like everyone else, Britts’ tank top was black with a rainbow My Little Pony flying on it. JaJa’s was kind of Dr. Who meets the Starry Night art work. One of the summer girls, Joaquina’s had a comic book-slash-nineties X-Men cartoon Rogue in front of a red and black X-Men symbol. Bae-Bae’s shirt was epic as shit, it had the big six of the Justice League, Aquaman, Bats, Supes, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Cyborg arranged like the Appetite for Destruction Guns and Roses album cover, with the top banner saying ‘Justice League’ and the bottom banner reading ‘Appetite for Justice’. Cede said it was the perfect combination of me and Sammy Boy. Kelli’s shirt was a play on that old Bette Midler Halloween movie ‘Hocus Pocus’. It had a caldron that was made of and contained the word ‘Amuck’ repeatedly. Rainbow’s was a little dirty with its busty, sexy Smurfette on the front. Sugar’s was all her…the Powderpuff Girls was on the front of it…Sugar and spice and everything nice plus a weird thing that no one but her parents understand. Marceau, the last of the summer femmes, was rocking a Storm tank. I worried that it might seem a little bit racist putting Tina in Jubilee and Marceau in Storm, but Bubbie had just looked at me like I was being stupid, so I shut up.

We had a blast that night. Just straight up performing and having fun. When Jamison brought her people back stage we were glad to see her. She had graduated NYADA in May and she had earned a place in a touring company of Cabaret, so she wasn’t going to be our tenant anymore starting that fall. We’d miss her, but she was more than happy and Ryan had already found his next roommate. Seth was transferring to NYU for his last two years. He and Artie were ecstatic. So was Ryan when he was being honest. He didn’t like his ‘prone to piss people off but unable to fight his way out of a wet paper bag’ brother so far away from him; besides Seth had wasted a boat load of money going back and forth pretty much every weekend. After we finished the meet and greets, we actually packed up our stuff and caught an Uber to the airport. We took a red eye flight to Dayton. By the time most people were having breakfast, the five of us, and all our fellow Limans, were home. Fuck that was an awesome feeling. It wigged me out that no matter where I went or what I did Lima was still home. But it was…and I was done fighting that feeling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing profound or deep to say.  
> I stand with the Trans-Community, those who have chosen to serve and those who simply exist. Please remember, you are exactly as the HDIC (Head Deity in CHarg) designed you. Anyone who says otherwise is a failure as a Christian and as a Human Being.  
> I am more grateful than I can say to the US Senate Democrats, as well as Senators Collins, Murkowski & McCain for voting down the latest GOP attempts to destroy the middle and working class in America.  
> Now if we could just get a single payer system like the rest of the developed world...#pipedreams
> 
> Okay, maybe that was a little deep.  
> Song Rec  
> James Arthur - Say You Won't Let Go  
> Beautiful love song.
> 
> Let me know what's on your mind.  
> Drop me a comment & tell me what you think.  
> TTFN,  
> Anni


	6. Father to Son (Queen), Send ‘em On Down the Road (Garth Brooks), The Best Day (George Strait) & Am I Evil (Metallica)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fathers Day Weekend, A break from the tour. A time for Dads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> Merci Beaucoup to my great Beta Reader DaughterofDarkness87. She is truly a Godsend.

Chapter 6  
Father to Son (Queen)  
George PoV

“May You Live in Interesting Times”. That’s an ancient Chinese curse…not a blessing. It took me forever to understand how anyone could consider that to be a curse. But eventually I understood. There was something to be said for peace and quiet…and when you lived in interesting times, there was very little of either. My life could not have been more interesting if I tried. I was living in a mad house. I was working like a mad man, and the support system and family that I existed within all had it just as bad. The summer before my blood born daughter’s freshman year of college was also the summer before my wife’s first semester of med school, the summer before my younger son’s senior year of high school, before my younger daughter’s freshman year of high school. Oh, and I forgot to mention that it was also the summer of my eldest son’s first North American tour with his wife, and their husband and the summer before their junior year of college. Yeah, and that was just on the home front.

At work, well, at my primary job…general contractor, I was in the midst of my heaviest time of year. Spring and summer meant a shit ton of outdoor jobs. Projects like new roofs, decks, patios and outdoor rooms were more often than not planned for that timeframe and Lima was no exception. Just in the month of June we had six covered patio jobs, three outdoor kitchen, bar and dining areas and seven decks. In addition to all of those, I was also working two kitchen remodels and a basement buildout. And those were just the smaller projects. I was also building a full, basement to roof, house for the kids’ buddies. That one was near completion. I was waiting to hear back from Maribel on the finishes. By the time it came for the Ohio tour stops, Santana, Artie and Brittany would be able to sleep in a house they owned. I was busy as hell on the work front but I couldn’t really complain. It was a good thing. I had a kid in college, a wife quitting her job to go back to med school…all that work was a blessing. But in addition to the paying jobs, I was also working on my part of the first Athraichean Properties subdivision. We’d gotten over the first few hurdles. The Public Hearings had been a pain in the ass but thank God for Sander Evans’ southern boy charm. We’d done the plat map and gotten it approved. We’d met all the city and county zoning requirements. We’d passed the marketability and feasibility studies and gotten our regional impact surveys all done, registered and we were good to move forward. That we’d accomplished before the New Year. However, we’d needed to concentrate in the first couple of months of the year on the shopping plaza. When that was finished, we all agreed to take a breather before we launched our selves into getting the land cleared. So, April was taken off.

May hit me full force; I was deluged with jobs and trying to manage the timber buyer that we worked out a deal with to clear all the trees, stumps and larger bushes from the land for us. Best part was that we actually made some money on the deal. Granted we poured that money right into the next stage of the project…getting all the pipes and lines ran to make the land livable. I got all the permits we needed and found a company who would run things the way we needed them. Turned out that the city and county were easy, they even agreed to lay the pipes we wanted used. Finding a firm willing to encase the electric, cable and phone lines in red ABS pipes had given me migraines and nightmares. But we finally had everything in place and all that work had started the Monday before Father’s Day.

I was really looking forward to Father’s Day that year. Danica had decided that, since all the kids were coming home that weekend, and it was the first wedding anniversary for Kevon and Trice, we’d do a huge family dinner. But because her life was going crazy too, it would be at a restaurant. She had twin terrors at home with the sweetest smiles ever. One of them was fully potty trained and the other was still having accidents at what Dani and Bent considered an alarming rate. The truth was that some kids just hated to stop what they were doing to go to the bathroom. Hell, some adults felt the same damn way. But where Maea was having trouble with going when her body told her to go…Mara was having trouble listening to anything anyone other than her body told her to do. Not Mother Richardson…the kid was too smart for that. But she refused to listen to any of the people who worked for Mother Richardson at her new center. Timeouts didn’t bother Mara. You could take every toy away but you couldn’t take her imagination from her and that seemed to be all the toy she really needed. Dani and Bent were getting near their wits end. According to the Parents Jones, the Twins were more of a hand full than their three elder siblings were at their age all put together.

On the work front, Benton and Danica were both pretty damn busy. When I was honest with myself, I was pretty sure that they had it worse than me. At least I was outside a lot and the worse I had to deal with was a toilet replacement. They were up to their wrists in yuck mouths on a daily basis. Parents held off on getting their kids major dental problems handled. The orthodontist that they have in their office now was busy almost from open to close every day. Things are crazy and on top of all of that, they agreed to take on two dental school residents, one male and one female, who needed the residency to complete their education. It wasn’t something new to them, but Benton was having trouble with the young guy and his constant need to flirt with Danica. The guy was a twenty-seven year old white kid and he had dreams of the hot, curvy older Black woman teaching him how to pleasure women. I loved my Becah, but I couldn’t say I blamed the kid for having a crush. He hadn’t crossed the line or anything. But Benton was pissy as hell whenever the kid’s name was mentioned. The worse part was that Danica was amused by the kid and irritated by what she perceived as Benton’s lack of faith in her. Yeah, things in the Jones house were interesting to say the least.

The Evans side of that equation was not having any less drama in their lives. Sander was the face and primary architect of Athraichean Properties. He was working two full time jobs. He and Gabby were raising two middle schoolers and a toddler. Gabby was working a full time and a half job teaching. She was coordinating a bunch of shit with her relatives to try and either catch or take out the guy stalking Mercedes. On top of that, they were fiscally sound and their credit was being rebuilt quite quickly thanks to Gwen and Saul…who were financial gurus of the first caliber, by the way. Anyway, they were starting to think about having a home of their own again. But that line of thinking came with its own drama. Neither Sand nor Gabs wanted to seem ungrateful, nor did they necessarily want to separate Sloane, Mara and Maea. So, while they waited for the right time to move back out on their own, they were living smart. Squirreling away what wasn’t needed for day to day living or to finance Sander’s dream that he infected me and Hell-Bent with. Yes, Athraichean Properties was a mental disease that came from too close contact with a dreamer. But then again, so was half the shit going on in our lives, so there really wasn’t much I could complain about on that side.

The main thing all we three couples all had in common was the cycles of worry and relief we were going through with our kids all off ‘touring’ around the country. We woke up worried, watched the morning news for news of their activities. Unfortunately, the week before Father’s Day the news was all full of that non-bill paying Fershtinkiner Trump, we didn’t get too see too much of our kids. Thankfully Lauren’s cousin had been kind enough to link us all in on their News Feed. So, we did get the online news about their happenings. Still, we tended to go about our morning business worried. We would talk to Noah, Mercedes and Sam around lunch time…their morning, were relieved for a couple of hours…while beginning to get worried about Tessa, talked to her mid-afternoon…her morning, were relieved for a couple of hours…while beginning to get worried about how the show would go that night. It was a whole, vicious cycle. But at least they were all calling everyday…and Joe was calling his parents on the daily too. We’d run into Big Dave Karofsky and he was in serious parental melt down because he hadn’t spoken to his son in over a week. I happened to know from Tessa that he was fine. He had been their Roadie assistant the night before. So, not only was I able to tell him that his son was fine and hadn’t had any accidents that led to dismemberment or death…the information was less than twenty-four hours old.

So yeah, Father’s Day was pretty damn important that year. The kids got in at the ass crack of dawn Saturday morning and they crashed hard. Which was understandable, when they got up, they all split up. Noah brought Bubbie and Nikki to see us, while Sam and Mercedes took the affectionately called ‘elder sibs’ and went to see their parents. They had dropped Tessa off on their way home that morning. Jake came by during his ‘lunch hour’ and we all had a good meal and caught up with each other. Nikki dominated the conversation at first telling us all about her time with her parents on the road, including time with Dev, Tonya, Kev and Tricie, a trip to Six Flags and a trip to the Georgia Aquarium. Though she loved Jake and Tessa and Triple S, the one of her older aunts and uncles that she had bonded with the tightest was definitely Patrice. But it was an easy thing to understand. Even if she made her living with applied math…Patrice shared a love of theoretical mathematics that even Ruth and Saul and Noah couldn’t match. It was good for Nikki to have that and to see a woman in a STEM field. There weren’t enough role models for young girls to encourage them to go into the maths and sciences. As much as Sarah takes after the Howard-Mayzer math giftedness, she wasn’t interested in math beyond financial and accounting any more than Noah was.

Jake brought Noah up to speed on their pool business. He was working with five of the other guys from the New Directions and they had North Lima, the McKinley, Shawnee and Lima Heights school clusters, on lock. Some of the outlying areas still used places like Sears and Pools-n-More…but with unbeatable prices, a work ethic that the big guys couldn’t touch because none of them wanted to let the others down, and-at least according to a few of my clients who were also their clients-their statuses as eye candy…Puckerman Pool Services was the go to pool cleaners for every pool owner in the area. Noah was more than happy. He’d handled their books for the entire time he’d run it, but Jake and Gwen had a deal. They both kept track of everything, income and overhead, and balanced their copies of the books separately and then reconciled both sets at the end of the month. So far, Jake hadn’t been more than fifty cents off. Gwen was sure that he’d be able to handle them without her…but he wasn’t as confident as she was. She did handle the taxes. I didn’t blame Jake for that at all. She did mine to. I didn’t like to risk my math skills when it came to the US government. It just wasn’t worth it.

Noah got Sarah talking about what she was looking forward to most about going to McKinley that fall. The answer pretty much boiled down to ruling the Cheerio’s JV squad with an iron fist and making a place for herself in the school’s newspaper. She was pretty sure that she could convince Sue to let her do a fashion column. “If not this year, then definitely next year. With Tessa gone, the paper needs new leadership. That Ben-Israel kid had turned it into a gossip mag. Tessa pulled it back from that tragedy and put it back to more what school papers should be…but she did that by trimming all the fat. We need to reintroduce some of the fun stuff without letting the bull crap take back over.”

“Just remember…starting the first day you walk into high school, your real and true permanent record begins. Colleges look at everything. Lyor won’t admit it, but I’m damn sure that he had to grease some palms to get my ass in to Columbia. To be the next Anna Wintour, you will have to get your paper the right way.” Noah said gently. “Now, I will say that Tessa’s godmother is besties with Isabella Wright over at Vogue. Unlike her boss, Isabella takes interns every year. Kurt is already on her short list for his senior year. You get your shit handled…and you can easily make sure that you have that opportunity. Have you thought about where you want to go to school?”

Sarah nodded. “The New School…Parsons. It’s in New York. I can do both fashion design at Parsons and creative writing at the Public Engagement School.”

Rebecah smiled. “Okay…and if you change your mind?”

Sarah shrugged, but gave her mother a look that clearly asked if she really thought Sarah was going to change a life goal she’d secretly held in her heart for years. “Then the New School has a ton of other majors I can switch to without too much trauma and drama.”

“Besides, in New York, she’d still have NYU, Columbia and a ton of other schools she could transfer too if her grades are good enough.” Tessa pointed out. “So, make sure that your grades are epic and try for as good an SAT and ACT score as humanly possible.”

“Speaking of, how are your SAT prep classes going Jake?” I asked.

“You’re taking them already?” Tessa was surprised.

“Yeah, between it being my senior year and having football, basketball, New Directions and academic bowl, not even talking about my three AP classes…yeah, me and Ryder wanted to go ahead and take the test prep when we could really focus on them. Besides, I’m taking the graduation test in the fall, so…it just made sense to take them now.” Jake said with a winning smile.

“So…have you finally decided where you’re going to apply then?” Becah asked. Jake had been going back and forth between so many schools. Trapped between wanting to stick near family and going to a school that really had the program he needed.

Jake shrugged. “I really like Penn State, the University of Miami and Illinois Institute of Technology. They all have top tier architectural engineering programs and I think I can get into those three, unlike MIT and Cal Tech. I mean, Abrams couldn’t even get into MIT.”

“Oh please, Artie didn’t really want to go to MIT, their film program isn’t all that spectacular.” Noah scoffed. “He still won’t admit it…but I’m willing to bet that he fucked up the essay or something on purpose.”

Tessa rolled her eyes and looked at Nikki. “Don’t use that word, Niks.” Then she swatted her brother against the back of his head. “Don’t cuss in front of Nikki. Cede will kick your ass.”

“Yeah, because ass isn’t a curse word.” He shot back.

“Kids…try to behave with some maturity in front of your daughter-slash-niece.” I dragged them from the fight before it could get going good.

“Sorry.” They both said sheepishly.

“Zayde George…what do you want for Father’s Day?” Nikki asked me out of nowhere.

I looked around the table. “I’ve got it right here. Nik-Nak. I’ve got it right here.”

Becah gave me one of her beautiful smiles. Sarah and Nikki shared their, almost identical ones with me, too. Tessa’s bright grin was no less lovely, different though it may have been. The same was true for Jake’s and Noah’s. I wished that Bethany was with us, but other than that, I couldn’t think of a single other thing I needed in my life. Yes, I lived in interesting times. But the crazy was worth it for moments like that.

Send ‘em On Down the Road (Garth Brooks)  
Michael Chang, Sr. PoV

I was very happy that Mike chose to come home to visit for Father’s Day. I knew that he didn’t have to. He’d not done so the summer before when he stayed in California and worked. He had called and sent me a gift. That was good. I was happy to get a gift rather than a card with a gift card inside it. That had been my Father’s Day for years…since his mother had stopped choosing my gifts for him when he was ten. On my Birthday, Christmas, Father’s Day, always a card and a gift card. I never realized he got me that because he had no idea what to get for me. I’d held myself so aloof from my son; he hadn’t known what to get his own father. As much as I still didn’t necessarily like his fiancée…she just was different than who I had imagined my daughter-in-law would be…I would always be grateful to her for being strong enough to fight back when he was taking her for granted. If she had not been, he’d have never have called home that night and we wouldn’t have the measure of closeness that we now shared. A closeness that allowed him to buy me a gift he was confident I would enjoy…a gift that I actually loved.

When he got home on Saturday morning, he and I had had a nice talk in the kitchen over breakfast. His mother had already left for her Mahjong club since he’d kept his imminent arrival a secret. “So, my son, how are you enjoying your touring?” I asked him in our native tongue. Well, technically that of my father…both my son and I had been born in America.

He responded in kind. “Father, it has been an amazing experience. I didn’t realize how much went into a tour of this magnitude. It is amazing. And I am learning so much about my craft. I never dreamed I would get to work with Rino Razalan. She is just amazing. Every day we perform a million different styles of dance and she makes sure that they are all blended seamlessly. I’ve never had so much fun and joy and it is amazing, Father.” He gushed.

“So, have you done anything but dance?” I teased after responding appropriately to the joy he found in his work for the summer. He spoke of the museums that they’d visited, and having fun with his fiancée and their friends at amusement parks and going on dates with Tina on their days off. They had gone to the Smithsonian together in Washington and found quiet time to spend together no matter how crowded the schedule.

“But Father, even with all the time we spend together and with our friends from here, we’ve made good friends with others on the tour too.” He said happily. “Jax, Simeon…they are really cool. It’s a little weird, they’ve been there since the beginning…but sometimes I get the feeling that they are still finding their bonds with the rest of the Crew. Its like KAMA’s crew is a family, but they are the second cousins or something. Anyway, Joseph is cool too, but he’s a bit too flirty. I know he’s straight, because he and Marceau are totally dancing around being something, but he is constantly flirting with everyone. It’s a little disconcerting, to say the least.”

I gave him a thoughtful look. “For some people that is simply their way. When I was in law school, I had a professor who called everyone ‘honey’ or ‘darling’ or some other such nonsense. It wasn’t to demean or harass. It was simply how she spoke. Perhaps too, it could be a coping mechanism. You’ve said that Joseph is British. I imagine that over there where homosexuality is more accepted, he may often find himself to be the only heterosexual man in the room. Maybe he learned to out flirt the flirts…or at least give as good as he got.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” He looked thoughtful. “Thanks Father.” He might have said more, but a huge yawn cracked his jaw, so I sent him up to get some sleep. I noticed that he moved with a grace and fluidity of movement I’d rarely seen before he left home.

As I was finishing my morning paper, it hit me. He’d hidden his dancer’s grace when he’d lived at home. He had made himself clop and clod to hide the fact that he was and had always been a dancer. I knew it with the same surety that I had known I’d never survive medical school. I knew it with the same surety that I had known that Julia Zheng had been the woman I was destined to marry within an hour of meeting her. It was a slap in the face. I understood in that moment, the final piece of the puzzle. The final thing that was standing in the way of me having the type of relationship I’d always longed to have with my son; the kind of relationship that, in the dark hours when I could be nothing but honest with myself I had to admit, I wanted with my own father. Michael…Mike… He’d tried to be who I wanted him to be even if it made him miserable. Then, he had tried for years to carefully bring me to a place of understanding without permanently damaging our bond. Now, I was the one who needed to make some changes. I just had to figure out exactly what form those changes needed to take.

So as my beautiful wife of over twenty years played Mahjong…a.k.a gossiped with the few other Chinese women in the area. As my twenty-one-year-old son slept in the room he’d left for college and would never again live in, in the same way he had such a short time ago. As they rejuvenated themselves, I adjourned to my office and spent an hour in introspection. I made several decisions and realized that the best place to start was probably the most difficult. I picked up the phone and called the Cohen home. I was somewhat grateful that Frederick Cohen answered. “Hey, Mike…Everything Okay? I’m surprised that you’re still up and around. Tina’s been knocked out since ten minutes after she walked in the door.” He said swiftly before I could let him know that he had the wrong Michael Chang.

“Mr. Cohen, Mike is also asleep. This is Michael. I was wondering if you knew if your wife or daughter had made any plans for lunch tomorrow,” I asked before he could start talking again. I was sure that part of the reason Tina had grown up to be so painfully shy was that it was difficult to get a word in edgewise with her loquacious parents.

“Wow, Michael. I think those are the most words I’ve ever heard you say at one time. Certainly, all directed at me,” he quipped. He had apparently missed his calling as a comedian.

I sighed. “It is with that in mind that I was calling. I’ve not been entirely fair to your daughter, not because she is the wrong kind of Asian, as I know she believes, simply because she wasn’t my choice for Michael. However, I’ve begun to understand that he is the one who has to make his own choices and it is up to me to accept them, or possible lose him forever.”

“Yeah, it sucks being a dad. For years they want to do everything you do or want them to. Then they have to do what you tell them to. Then suddenly, when you’re used to being the Head Honcho in Charge, they flip the script and want to make all their own decisions. You can’t even say anything if you think it’s the wrong one because if you do say, ‘taking a summer to tour around the country with your friends maybe isn’t the wisest choice’ and then you turn out to be wrong…the gloating is painful man…it almost physically hurts.” He babbled. “But in my defense, when I said I thought it might be a bit stupid, I didn’t know that they were going to be in million-dollar Winnebagos and have ten-foot-tall former Green Berets protecting them.”

“Yes, I have to say, young Jones, Evans and Puckerman are doing surprisingly well thinking things through and using their success to help and benefit their friends.” I said calmly. It was funny. I’d been hesitant for Mich-Mike to go on the tour, but I’d never doubted that the tour would be safe and well-appointed. Mercedes Jones didn’t strike me as the kind of person who enjoyed, or was even willing to endure, ‘roughing it’.

Cohen chuckled. “Ain’t that the truth? Burt swears that that lawyer they got for Finn, Jones’ uncle…total shark…he wasn’t planning to take a dime if they didn’t win. Said that the drunk asshole had made his favorite niece cry and therefore he had to pay.” We actually shared a laugh. Burt Hummel was the best mechanic in Lima. There weren’t many people in town who didn’t utilize his services. He’d tell anyone who was in his shop long enough that story. He’d always finish by saying he still wasn’t sure if he should be mad or grateful. Burt was both a good father and a proud man. There were times when those two aspects of his personality came into minor conflict. “So, you said something about lunch?”

“Yes. Soon the Cohens and the Changs will be family through our children. We should get to know each other. Find commonalities. In a few years…hopefully we will be blessed with grandchildren. We will both see them more often if we get along and are considerate of each other.” I postulated. Goodness knew that my parents and Julia’s had not gotten along well at all. Mike saw one set of grandparents at Christmas and the other at Easter and, until he was old enough to beg to go to Asian camp, he’d spent one week per summer with each. He’d never asked to spend more time with either set.

“That strikes me as a pretty good idea. Besides, maybe if my wife has yours to talk to about all the wedding stuff she’ll stop making me look at four different shades of white. Like Tina’s going anywhere near a traditional white dress.” He laughed happily. He certainly did laugh quite a lot.

“Julia just prays that Tina doesn’t make her wear an, and I am quoting here, old lady mother of the groom dress.” I confided.

I could almost see him shake his shaggy head of hair. “We’ve got at least a couple of years yet. I don’t know why they are in such an all fired hurry.”

I was thoughtful. “I have seen the Say Yes to the Dress episode Rebecah Puckerman was on. Apparently, just ordering the dress and having it altered can take up to a year or more. Perhaps they are ruminating on things that must be decided as soon as possible.”

“Jeez, I rented my tux a week before the shindig.” He told me. “We guys have it much easier.”

I could not agree vehemently enough. “Where would you like to go for lunch tomorrow?” I asked before either of us said something that would get us in trouble if my Julia or his Madeline overheard…which Julia always did at the worst possible time.

“You know what, I’m like Mikey in those old commercials. I’ll eat anything. So, you can pick, just let us know when, where and for Tee and Maddie, what to wear.” He returned with the almost visual smile I was coming to expect from a phone conversation with him. I was sure that I had never before known such a jocular person in my life.

“Usually for things like this, we’d go to Vivace. It’s my favorite restaurant.” I said cautiously. I wasn’t sure if he and his wife regularly went out for lunch at a fine dining establishment.

“Man, Maddie loves that place. With the whole tie required thing, I can usually get away with only going on our anniversary and her birthday. She’s gonna have one hell of a happy Father’s Day this year.” He chortled. “But you’ve been married a long time too. You know…the happier they are, the happier we are.”

I could not help but agree. We spoke only a little longer before he thanked me for the invite and reminded me to call him with what time they should meet us there and signed off. As soon as my call to Frederick-just call me Freddie-Cohen ended, I immediately dialed the familiar number for Vivace Cuisine. I was perfectly ready to bribe our way into a table for six. I was surprised that no monetary inducement was necessary. “It is a simple matter of changing the party size of your reservation. Though, I suppose from the way you phrased your inquiry, it was a Father’s Day surprise for you from Mrs. Chang.” Fraser, one of the hosts told me with a slightly apologetic tone.

“My wife is a queen among woman.” I told him honestly. When the call wrapped up, I called Freddie back to let them know that the reservation was for twelve thirty at Vivace for sure.

I’d accomplished all I needed to in my study, so I returned my coffee cup to the kitchen and decided to wash up the small number of dishes that had been used since my wife left earlier. I finished up and was wiping down the counter when the backdoor opened to admit my beautiful wife. Julia was carrying a few reusable cotton bags bearing the logo of the new grocery store across town that had opened just a few months before.

Her eyes tracked mine as I looked at the bags I took from her small, yet strong hands. “I know it’s all the way across town…but the freshness of their meats and produce…heck, just the selection of their produce. It is most definitely worth the drive.” She defended smoothly.

Again, I found myself in a position where I couldn’t argue against the truth. I pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. “They do seem to have a better selection of authentic tasting ethnic food. Even the Asian Market’s ginger isn’t as fresh as theirs. And my blood pressure has significantly decreased since your introduced me to beet juice.”

The disgusted face she made was truly adorable. “I cannot believe that you drink that stuff alone. I mean, yes, it is very healthy…but so are Chia and Flax seeds and you don’t see me taking those unless they are blended into a smoothie too.” she chuckled. “I ran into Maribel Lopez at Sprouts.”

“Really, I didn’t think she was the kind of woman to do her own shopping, not for groceries anyway. Doesn’t she have people for that?”

“Oh, shush you.” She chided as she swatted me playfully. “She’s currently busy decorating Santana, Brittany and Arthur’s house, and crowing happily about having them put down at least some of their roots so close to home. Anyway, a little birdy told her that KAMA will more than likely be giving out fairly substantial bonuses at the end of the tour. With so many of their friends having houses here…”

“Maybe Michael, Mike,” I corrected myself, “and Tina could too and then we’d be able to see them more often, especially after they start having children.” I completed her thought process. “I would be willing to help them afford to build a house here, if they wanted to do so.”

Julia gave me a long hug. “That is good, because, I happen to know for a fact that the subdivision that the two triad’s houses are in has sold almost all their lots. There are three worth anything left and those three are only left because their buyer’s financing fell through. My thought was that maybe we could go ahead and buy the land -maybe go in together with Maddie and Freddie- and we give it to them for a wedding gift…or sooner if they decide that they want to use their bonuses in the way we’re hoping they might want to use them.”

“You are a genius, Oh beautiful wife of mine.” I told her happily. I should have paid attention to how she got her way in the household years ago. She didn’t command and bluster. She facilitated you in achieving her goal, and she did so in such a way that you thought it was your idea all along. Julia was positively diabolical.

She gave me a smug smile. “I know.” Her retort was so apt to my thoughts that I wondered for the millionth time if telepathy was among her many talents. “Anyway, she stopped me to tell me about the house, yes, but also to invite me to have lunch with her and Analyn Anderson next week. I think that they want me to join them on the patient care board at St. Rita’s.”

“Would you enjoy that?” I asked her noncommittedly. I knew that she had been longing to find something to fill her days after Mike graduated. She had a few church things, and she gave sewing and violin lessons…but combined they only filled a few hours a week.

“I really think I would. You know that boards like that always need representation of people of color and women too. But I was still considering Sue Sylvester’s offer.” She replied.

Sue Sylvester had come to the house shortly after the end of the school year and told my wife that she needed her to come and teach Chinese as a foreign language as well as violin. However, Principal Sylvester had made sure that Julia understood it would mean going back to college and getting an education degree. “Because, I’m not that idiot Figgins, I need you because I know that you know both the subjects, but I don’t need somebody who doesn’t understand how to teach either.”

The visit had been weighing heavily on Julia’s mind ever since. We’d done well over the years. Julia had never had any need to work. In fact, she hadn’t had an actual job since before Mike was born. His early years she’d devoted most of her time and attention on making sure that his formative time was enriching and that he had all that he needed to grow and develop well. When he’d started school, she’d volunteered her time and gave her energy to his classes. From Pre-K to fifth grade she was always his class Room Mother, often at the school from when she took him in the morning until he was ready to leave in the afternoon. When he moved on to middle school, she took over the PTA. She’s single handedly made William Henry Harrison Middle School the best funded middle school in the entire state of Ohio. But just the nature of growing up combined with the way Figgins ran William McKinley High School had left her with far less need for her contributions to the school. Once Mike started driving, she had even less to do day to day. Unfortunately, by then, not only was her work history more than a decade old, but the nation was entering a recession and the world was on the brink of global economic collapse. Financially, we were okay. My work wasn’t negatively impacted and I’d been very conservative in our investments so our retirement portfolio wasn’t even hit too hard. But no one in Middle America needed custom designed gowns. And with the bursting of the housing bubble, there was no one hiring real estate agents, let alone one who hadn’t sold a house since the Clinton Administration.

“Well, why don’t you do both?” I suggested. “Most of the colleges in the area have flexible schedules for non-traditional students. You could always schedule your classes around the board meetings. We can certainly afford to use some of our savings to handle the costs and just replace it when you start working.”

She looked at me in wonderment. “But – but what about you?”

I shrugged. “I am happiest when you are happy. I will be fine. If you have an evening class, I’ll swing by Sprouts and grab one of their big salads and premade dinners. If we need to host a dinner party or something for your board or my work, then we’ll figure it out. We can make this work.” I pulled her into a hug. “For the last twenty-two years you’ve put Michael and I before yourself. Now, it is your time to come first in this family.”

“Wow…thank you, Qīnài De. I wonder what college is even like now. Can I even get in? How do I even start?” She babbled the fears that had been holding her back from something she clearly wanted to do.

I pressed a kiss to her still raven wing black hair. “Julia, our son is upstairs. He can tell you all about college in twenty-fifteen. As for getting in…you graduated magna cum laude from Stanford. I am almost positive that you can get into OSU-Lima or UNOH easily. As for the rest…well that’s why God gave us Google.”

We shared a laugh and I realized that I still needed to tell her about my morning’s introspection. I lead her to the banquette where Mike and I had had our talk earlier. I told her all about my ruminations and realizations. Then I confessed to knowing about her Father’s Day surprise for me and how I’d changed it to include our future in-laws in our celebrations. “Michael Robert Chang…I am very proud of you. I know that it can be hard to see past our hopes and dreams for our son. But the biggest and brightest dream we had for him was that he would grow up to be a good strong man. And he had. He is strong, strong enough and smart enough to learn how to bend rather than break. He is good, a good person and a great friend. He is a wonderful son, and I am sure Tina would say that he is a great fiancé.”

“You did an amazing job raising him.” I returned honestly.

She kissed my cheek. “You did help. I know that things haven’t always been smooth sailing in you’re and Mike’s relationship…but you are not a bad father Michael. You’ve provided everything he or I could ever want or need. So, we did an amazing job raising our son.”

I still felt that she’d done the better job, but the look on her face told me not to argue further. She and I talked a bit more…fleshing out plans for the immediate future and hopes for the more distant time to come. I was a little surprised when Mike came down just a couple of hours after he’d gone up to rest. Julia jumped up and ran to envelop our boy…young man…in a long overdue hug. They talked for a while and I let their voices wash over me…just enjoying having them both home even if only for a little while. We spent the afternoon chatting, talking, and Mike and I helped Julia make short work of her usual Saturday tasks. That was a good thing. It allowed myself and Mike to learn a few of her laundry miracles. It was in incredible day. When it came time to make dinner, we handled it together. I’d not held a knife in many years, but it turned out I was still a dab hand at slicing and dicing. As we worked, the kitchen had been filled with music. Mike actually knew the words to many of the songs I’d bothered to learn the words to myself, in my youth. A fact he credited to that Schuester character. Unlike my beautiful wife, I could carry a tune…but Mike’s voice was more than simply carrying a tune. He was surprisingly good and seemed well trained. The credit for that, he told us, went to Tina, Mercedes and Ms. Cochran-Martinez.

Over dinner, Julia told Michael-Mike an edited version of the changes to our original Father’s Day plan. “I’ve already changed our reservations for lunch tomorrow. It is for pretty much right after church. Though, you do look like you’ve grown enough this last year that the suits you left home won’t fit any longer.” She worried.

“He can borrow one of mine.” I assured the easily.

Both my wife and son turned and looked at me as if I’d spoken a language so foreign to them that it hadn’t even originated on Earth. “You are going to let me borrow one of your five thousand-dollar suits?” Mike gaped at me when he was finally able to speak.

“Yes. I know that I have not in the past. But you are a man now.” They both still looked quite perplexed.

Until my wife had a realization, “Mike, your father, well…he is trying to say that he is understand that you are no longer a little boy. You’ve grown up and are a man now. A boy no longer, that means that you two are growing into a different relationship. One that will, eventually, be between two equals.”

“Exactly.” I smiled brightly. Julia had always been better at expressing my emotions than I was. My disconnect from enlightened emotional connections was why I had gone into intellectual property and copyright law. It was as lucrative as contracts with far less emotional involvement or litigation. I knew that many attorneys found it all dry and boring. But then again, many people found me to be dry and boring so I suppose it was a match made in heaven.

After dinner, we took a little time and Mike found a suit to wear the next day. Then, while we were at it, we helped him to clean out his closet of all the things he’d outgrown in the past year or so. Julia told him to take them down to the kitchen and she would take them to Good Will when she ran her Monday errands. The entire evening was, well, it was what I’d always hoped we’d have when we spent family time together. We’d spent years forcing the simple pleasures of quality time. But always in the past there had been an underlying tension of expectations and diverging hopes and dreams. And even just a tenseness that came about because one can schedule time to spend together, yes, but there was no way to enforce the quality aspect that we shared that evening.

Even with his nap, Mike retired early that night as did Julia and I. though I was sure that he went to sleep far earlier than his mother and I had. Sunday mornings started early in our home because our church started Sunday School at nine with the church service following at ten. Most people seemed to blame the smile I wore on having Mike unexpectedly home on Father’s Day. I let them believe that. Julia did too. We knew that his presence was only partly responsible for our joyousness. But no one else needed to be enlightened any further. The service was good. I had to admit I’d not paid much attention. I knew that the Sunday School lesson and the sermon had both revolved around the love our Heavenly Father had for all His children…but other than that I was mainly noticing the way the pretty coral colored, summer wrap dress Julia was wearing flowed over her pretty curves. I managed to go through the motions convincingly and was paying rapt attention to the benediction.

Thankfully, despite the holiday, church let out in a timely fashion and we were soon making our way to Vivace. We arrived just moments before the Cohens. I noticed that, like Julia and I, they owned a Toyota sedan. But theirs was an older model Avalon than our own, one that showed that they may not have hand an exorbitant income, but they were decent financial planners. If I had to guess, they had timed its purchase to ensure that it was paid off by the time Tina graduated high school. And it would, with Burt Hummel caring for it, last until she graduated college easily. Their choice of apparel showed much the same tendency. Madeline Cohen was wearing a pretty sheath dress that stopped below her knees. The dress’ print was a bright, summery floral but it was a very traditionally cut dress that could be dressed up or down with the right accessories. Frederick Cohen was in a simple olive colored, but well-cut suit probably Ralph Lauren or J. Crew. I notice that while her parents had ascribed to my preferred theory on dressing…Tina was more along the lines of my beautiful wife. Her dress was beautiful. It was a rather retro cut with diagonal stripes that seemed to wrap around her. It was what Julia called a halter top, maxi dress with lining from neck to above the knees and then semi-sheer to the floor. As I said it was a beautiful dress, but it struck me most as a blend of a classic cut and a very modern, trendy color palette.

Though we’d arrived only moments before them, Mike still managed to make it over to their car in time to open Tina’s door for her while I did the same for his mother and Freddie did the same for Madeline. We said our hellos and made our why inside. Fraser was all smiles and greeted both Madeline and Julia like old friends. Not really surprising considering how well Julia tipped. He showed us to our table and we took care of seating our women before we took our own seats. I wasn’t sure what expectations I’d had of the meal. But honestly it was a truly positive experience. While we were incredibly different people, Frederick-Freddie- and I ordered almost the exact same mean from having a soup despite the heat, to both enjoying the Kunafa for our ‘dessert’. Khaled Alkhatib was so much more than a chef, the things he did with food, textures and flavors were, quite honestly, works of art.

However, the meal wasn’t simply enjoyable because of the food. The entire hour and a half was filled with intelligent discourse and debate. We had discussions on a wide variety of subjects, not even bothering to avoid the dreaded subjects of politics, religion and the impact of social media on the younger generations. Freddie and Maddie were, well to be blunt, some of the most left leaning people I’d ever met. But they were also well-informed and passionate. Their conversation was supported with cogent facts and they were able to sway me a bit towards their position on a few, more centrist, ideals. We were coming from two very different perspectives on many political issues and yet, even though we were two different religions…technically…we shared many of the same beliefs and principles. It was an enlightening afternoon. By the time we called for the check, I was forced to admit that my refusal to accept Mike’s choice of Tina, I’d cut myself off from getting to know two very interesting people with whom I shared many commonalities. I had to admit that my introspection was often showing me things I did not like about myself.

After we left Vivace, we decided to head to The Met for some of their cheesecake and a glass of wine. But mainly it was to continue conversing. Mike and Tina caught the tab for our dessert and we all took a long walk talking and getting to know each other. It was during that walk that I realized that Freddie and Mike were more comfortable with each other than I was with my son. That needed to change. Not their closeness. I was glad that Mike would get along with his father-in-law. But I wanted to have a closeness of my own with my son. I made a decision and before I could second guess myself, I had fired off a quick text to the office manager at my firm letting her know that I would be working from home both Monday and Tuesday. I would start building the relationship I wanted to have with my son…and there was no time like the present.

The Best Day (George Strait)  
Benton PoV

It was simply a truth that there was no Father’s Day better than one that a man got to spend with all of his children and his best friends and all of their children. Heck, my mom even came to spend the weekend with us. When she showed up Friday evening, I was happy. Then when I got up the next morning, I headed down to breakfast and found my four oldest, Tonya and Tricie’s parents know I claim them; just like I knew that Lester, Nichole and Quita all claimed my boys too, that was as it should be; they were all sitting having breakfast. I watched in the doorway, laughing at their antics as they fought over who got to hold their baby sisters. I didn’t even get the chance to hug all of them before my little MeDe and her Sam came strolling in with Hudson behind them. “Hey Daddy.” MeDe said with a big old, bright smile and she came and gave me a huge hug. I got a quick one from Sam before he disappeared downstairs to see his own parents. They usually spent quiet time downstairs as a family unit themselves on Saturday mornings. I didn’t fault them for it. They needed that time.

Every one of us heard when Gabby realized that her boy was home. Her squeal of happiness was probably heard three counties over. “Where’s Noah?” I heard my wife asked as I pulled my most unexpected child in for a hug. Hudson was a great young woman, but you could look at her and see that she still needed a bit of parental nurturing. It was humbling that she allowed us to provide that for her after all I was sure she had been through.

“He went to see George and Becah.” MeDe answered from where she had snatched Maea from Tricie’s embrace. “He’ll be over later.”

“Well, this is the best Father’s Day gift I could have gotten.” I couldn’t help but chuckle. “All my kids home for the weekend. This is just about perfect.”

“Well, what would make it perfect?” Tonya asked me confused.

I smiled. “Nothing that’s gonna happen for at least a couple of years.” I shot back.

She, Tricie and MeDe all shook their heads. “Sorry Papa Bent…but…naw, you’re definitely gonna have to wait a couple of years for perfection.” Patrice admonished.

“That’s alright, I’ve got Nik-Nak and Beth to spoil. I can wait,” was my smug reply.

We had a good meal, though it was, admittedly more breakfast foods for lunch than actual breakfast or even brunch. Puck and the entire Altman-Puckerman Crew rolled in around three. By then Sam and his clan had joined us chilling out in the living room. When we were all together, we were a hell of a loud bunch. That afternoon was no different. It was fucking awesome. Nikki, Hudson and I were debating Monopoly versus Life when, MeDe whistled for every. “Alright…surprise number one, everyone under thirty…sleep over at our house tonight. Parents, you have earned yourselves a night off.” She turned to her baby sisters who were sitting on Sam and Puck’s laps with Sloane on Kevon’s next to them. “Maea, Mara, you two want to come and stay with us, don’t you?”

Stevie, Stacey and Sarah all looked shocked and happy. But they didn’t have anything on Amara and Amaea. The twins literally hopped down from their brothers’ laps, ran over to Danica and started begging to be able to go. My beloved got down to their level. “If we say you can go…you two have to listen.” Their almost identical heads bobbed emphatically. “Then I suppose that you can go and stay with your sisters and brothers and niece.”

“Fank you, Mommy.” They said in perfect unison. Once they had permission all that was left as far as they were concerned was leaving. So Mercedes explained that they needed to pack their stuff. She knew they understood because they then grabbed her hands and dragged her up to their room. Sloane caught up quick and soon he’d been granted permission and forced his big brother to go and help him get his stuff too. No way were Stacey and Stevie getting left behind. They were off like shots as soon as Gabby nodded at their unasked question.

In less than thirty minutes, we were getting kisses and hugs and then boom, we were alone. We looked over at Sander and Gabby and Becah put into words what we were all thinking. “I know that they probably expect us to do something like go out to a fancy dinner or something…but is it wrong that I just want to go home and take a bubble bath with a glass of wine knowing that I won’t get interrupted.”

Danica and Gabby both laughed. “If it’s wrong, then I’m so right there with you girl.” Dani laughed. 

“I personally want to just watch TV for an entire show without having to change it lest little eyes see something they shouldn’t.” George raised a good point.

Sander chimed in next. “Or eat a plate of food a, hot the way God intended and b, without a little mouth ready, willing and able to eat more of it than I can.”

Gabby moaned. “We can have sushi.”

“Oh yeah, we can have sushi…” Danica said happily.

Becah and George exchange a long, speaking look. “You guys mind if we stay too.” George laughed.

I nodded. “Sure…you guys can go get your stuff and grab the wine. Me and Sander, we’ll go and get sushi and Chinese food from China Dragon. Gabby, you and Dani can pull up Netflix of Hulu and find something for us to binge watch.”

“Hell yeah.” San laughed.

It was good plan. We ate good food. We drank good wine and beer. We watched the hell out of Orphan Black. There was no one we had to please or entertain other than our selves. Even Momma had disappeared. We laughed our asses off as we told truly humiliating stories about our partners from way before we were the ages our adult children were that same night. There were breaks. Dani and I desperately needed to make love without having to worry about waking toddlers. So, did Sander and Gabby at least I assume that’s what they did when they disappeared for an episode and a half. Rebecah borrowed Dani’s jetted whirlpool tub for her soak. The night might not have been what the kids envisioned when they gave us a break from the young ones…but it was exactly what we needed. The next morning, after a breakfast that included eggs and coconut water and berry smoothies, we returned to being responsible adults.

When we saw all of our kids at the dinner Danica had organized, my first thought was that MeDe had gone shopping again. But my second was that we had a fine-looking family. Big as hell…the kids alone were rolling like twenty deep, but every single one of them was beautiful in their own special way. The dinner was great. I knew that Danica and MeDe could cook better than the chef of the restaurant my wife had rented, but I also knew that doing things the way she’d arranged them gave Dani and MeDe the opportunity to enjoy themselves without having to worry or work. That was worth everything. Everyone there was connected to us some as closely as the Fosters and Neelys and some as quasi-distantly as the Cochran-Martinezes. There was just so much love all around us. Nikki and Beth were in heaven with their Abah, Papa and Papi all in the same place. Lester and I had a blast embarrassing Devon and Tonya. It was the way Father’s Day was meant to be…full of laughter, family, fun and good food.

After dinner, the kids had taken center stage. “Alright, Daddy, you and Papa Bent have both been hinting…but you know grandbabies are a little bit off, other than Nik-Nak and Bitta-Beth for a few more years.” Tonya teased.

Lester laughed. “Alright, Lil Girl…but if you get tenure, I expect a baby to bounce on my knee no more than twelve months later.”

The whole room filled with laughter. “Anyway…as my better half was saying, since we can’t give you two what you say you want most. We figure that we’d give you something you were planning on giving yourselves. Well, put in on it anyway.” Devon continued when the laughter died down. I’d let Lester join me, Sander, and George in buying the RV that was scheduled to be delivered the following month. While he wasn’t really interested in following KAMA, he wanted to be able to use it one or two weeks a year to go visit the kids and take his boy to see some of the big national parks. To be honest, I’d have just lent it to him when he wanted to use it, but the man had his pride.

Kevon smirked. “We kicked in on it too.”

Mercedes, Sam and Noah just nodded when we looked over at them. “Everyone put in on it Daddy.” MeDe smiled.

“Me and Hudson did too.” Nik-Nak said proudly.

The four of us could barely speak to express our gratitude. It was a very touching gift. We’d only had a little more than the cost of a car left on the twelve bunk RV with its pull-out sofa and convertible dining banquette. Beth came forward carrying a big Father’s Day card. Inside was a printout of our remaining balance on our rolling man cave-slash-family vacation mobile. There was only five grand left. It looked like they had each put a thousand dollars on it…all of them, from Devon and Kevon all the way down to Sloane, including Nikki, Hudson and Bethany. Twenty thousand dollars of the balance had been covered as our mutual gift. It felt better when I thought of it like that. That way it was two-hundred and fifty bucks spent per kid per father. That one I could handle.

“Thanks so much, Kids.” Sander spoke up quietly. “This means a lot to each of us, knowing that you love us enough to put this kind of money towards us having a happy Father’s Day and feeling appreciated is pretty amazing. So, yeah. Thank you all.”

We each echoed the sentiment and the rest of our extended family congratulated us. Then Shelby and David asked if they could make an announcement. Beth started bouncing. “Can I tell…I haven’t told anybody that I’m gonna be a big sister too. Can I tell everybody?”

Nikki ran over and gave her a hug. “You, kind of, just did. I’m so happy for you Bee.” She laughed and we all couldn’t help but join her.

There were congratulations all around for the newlyweds. The rest of our time together that night was spent celebrating Kev and Patrice’s first anniversary. They got the usual gifts, including the rest of their china and tickets to shows and events in Atlanta…stuff like that. Apparently, their flight to visit us was their gift from MeDe. Then Sam and Noah gave them Fox Theater Season tickets. It was a nice evening. Everyone pitched in and we made short work of getting the kids’ house back in its normal configuration and all the party tables and such back down to their basement. It was funny that we left as childless as we’d arrived. Double A&S, Triple S and Jake didn’t make it back to their real homes until Tuesday morning. The best gift our older kids gave us turned out not to be the visit, or the kid-free weekend or even the RV. Nope, the best thing they did for us was somehow they managed to make Maea use the bathroom, not her pull up, every single time. And Mara didn’t have a single timeout or discipline problem for almost three months. Damn, I loved my kids. Now if I could just get that asshat at the office to stop flirting with my woman right in front of my face without catching a case…my life would be truly perfect.

Am I Evil (Metallica)  
Corbin Richardson PoV

Perhaps it was the nostalgia of the weekend…Father’s Day had such a special meaning for me. My own father couldn’t be bothered to show any emotional support, it just wasn’t his way. But he had instilled in me a will and a drive and a determination that few people could match. Perhaps it was all the social media postings of the Jones Family as the celebrated Father’s Day surrounded by friends. I knew that when I’d successfully absconded with my chosen prey, they would never be the same. The thought of tears in her mother’s beautiful eyes was almost as arousing as the sight of demure ‘Daddy’s Girl’ Mercedes Jones that she showed in the pictures her brothers and their wives posted to their ‘private’ Facebook accounts. Perhaps it was simply expediency…the knowledge that with most of the tour’s population was on a several day long break it would be the perfect time to reach out to Hank Schmidt. I was grateful that when I’d noticed the long break over Father’s Day weekend on the tour schedule, I’d made moves to get Hank’s brother Jim out of my way. The man was damn good at his job, and reading the emails exchanged between the two brothers had definitely been well worth the time spent…so it wasn’t a permanent removal. But Jim was seriously overprotective of his ‘black sheep’ of a twin and had threatened to quit his position when he’d felt I was the cause of Hank’s arrest. I hadn’t caused it. Hank was a salesman of illegal and illicit goods. That had caused his arrest…I’d just not done anything to prevent it. I could have, but I chose to let thing play out and reap the reward of a favor for smoothing things over after the fact.

In order to make sure that Jim couldn’t act as the angel on Hank’s shoulder…or hear anything that would make him take his years of experience and profitability to another company…I made sure that Jim wasn’t available over Father’s Day weekend. It was surprisingly easy. A small bug in his girlfriend’s ear from her good friend, who just happened to be one of my assistants, had managed quite well. It was Schmidt’s own fault. He’d been dating the lovely young woman for eight months and had yet to take the time to meet her family. Really, that just wasn’t a good idea. As I understood it, Jim had only one choice so he was off to the wilds of southern Oregon and pretty much unreachable. It served my purposes perfectly.

I called Hank Schmidt on his cell phone later in the evening on Father’s Day itself. “Mr. Richardson, I, uh…is something wrong with Jim?” he asked as soon as he recognized my voice.

“No Hank. Jim is fine. I believe that he is spending the weekend away with his girlfriend…channeling his inner Ben Stiller. No, I am calling because you owe me a favor. That spot of trouble I helped you get yourself out of in two thousand and six…” I reminded him.

He gulped audibly. “Uh, yeah…um…thanks again for that. I’m not exactly the kind of guy who would do well in prison.”

“Yes, well, your gratitude is appreciated…but unnecessary. What I need is you to do a few small things for me and we’ll be able to forget all about your unfortunate past peccadilloes.” I returned calmly.

“I’m not in New York right now. I’m on the road with rock-n-soul group KAMA.” He stammered. I think he was beginning to realize that all those years ago, he hadn’t escaped the consequences of his actions all together. He’d instead made a deal with a devil and it was coming due.

“You are exactly where I need you to be.” I assured him.

“I can’t get you anything until after this tour is over. These kids run a clean tour. The security guys check our buses all the time.” He made an erroneous assumption as to why I was contacting him. “If the money weren’t so good and the kids weren’t so nice, this would be a boring three months.”

I shook my head as his joke fell flat. Schmidt was useful, but that man was a certified moron. “I don’t need anything illicit from you. You’d have no way to get it to me even if I did. I simply need information.”

“What kind of information?” His confusion was palpable.

I laid out a quick fairy tale about wanting to get back into the music game and how I would need a major, flagship act to do so. “I don’t have to tell you that KAMA is the biggest thing to hit scene in quite some time. Probably they will be looking around for a better deal sooner rather than later. I need information on them…their likes and dislikes, their preferences and hatreds. Everything. So, what I need from you is information…weekly observations as you do the job you’re already being paid to do. I want to know everything that you can glean about the kids and their people. If I can build the right package, wooing them from Warner shouldn’t be all that hard.”

Hank Schmidt actually rather impressed me with the intelligence of his next question. “What kind of information will be useful? I don’t want to, ya know, tell you a lot of stuff that isn’t gonna help you.”

“Don’t worry about that. Just tell me everything you learn. Especially about Ms. Jones. From the interviews I’ve read, it seems like Puckerman and Evans mainly follow where she leads them.” though with an ass like hers who could really blame them. “Any information, no matter how small or inconsequential it might seem to you at the time, could make a world of difference. Weekly emails will be best, but if there is some particularly interesting tidbit feel free to go ahead and shoot it to me. I’ll text you the email address I want you to use. I’d like to keep this all on the hush until things are more firm on my end.”

“And that’s all I have to do…nothing illegal?”

“That’s all. Nothing illegal. I’d never ask someone to do anything I wouldn’t be willing to do myself.” I lied smoothly. What I was asking him to do was definitely technically illegal and certainly morally reprehensible, but I wanted the information and didn’t particularly care if he got in trouble for providing it. The email he’d be submitting the information to would be almost impossible to trace back to me. This entire conversation was taking place on a phone whose SIM card would be shredded before his first email came in. Ultimately, it would be his word against mine. And he was just a roadie with little past and no real future. The information he would be sending me was needed to further develop the securing of my beloved obsession. I’d already made several successful moves. A home where she and I could be very happy, most of my personal wealth quietly and inconspicuously shuffled into a tax shelter account with the Deutsche Bank…accessible from anywhere in the world. I had contacts in Ibiza, Dubai and Mykonos who could get my all the attitude adjusters I’d need until Dr. Becher had worked her magic and ensured that my query would find a home in her beautiful prison. Doctor Lydia Becher was an expert on behavioral conditioning and cognitive recalibrations. She was also willing to work for anyone who would allow her to advance her research…whether the global scientific and psychiatric community considered her experiments to be humane and worthwhile or not.

“Alright…send me the email. I’ll give you anything I find out.” Hank said resolutely. “After this we’ll be square, right?”

“Completely.” I returned. I also made a mental note to crush Hank Schmidt if he did not deliver any information of any importance, and possibly after I’d successfully left the country with the woman who would bear my children. It wouldn’t do to have too many loose ends left behind, after all. As soon as the call was ended, I texted the general access email address to him, popped out the SIM card and put them both in my desk safe until I was sure that everything was handled to my satisfaction.

With that business concluded, I showered and prepared myself to spend the evening with Toccara. In another world, perhaps I could have found a more than temporary satisfaction with her. She was witty, beautiful, voluptuous, sexy and a tigress in bed. Unfortunately, she was also something of a prude when it came to most of my preferred sexual activities. Still, she proved to have her uses outside the bedroom. She was tapped into all of the best celebrity gossip pipelines and unknowingly provided a wealth of information on Mercedes Jones. But best of all…she’d gotten us tickets to KAMA’s LA concert. I wasn’t sure how that would turn out. It could either go very well or horribly badly. I somehow doubted that her watchdogs would allow me to utilize the VIP backstage pass that was a part of my ticket. It would be both a blessing and a curse if they did. Being that close to her would be a dream come true for me. It would be both invigorating and unnecessarily perilous. I had an advantage that would surely be lost if I saw her face to face again.

I was physically rather forgettable Yes, I was tall, but more lanky than big…by the same turn, I wasn’t very handsome nor was I truly ugly. With brown hair and brown eyes, I was average. When added to the fact that I’d never been one who photographed well, there was every chance that my prey would not have been able to pick me out of a line up, as it were, when the time finally came to snatch her up. Giving her that fore knowledge was not a risk to be undertaken lightly. I would need to consider the advantages and disadvantages carefully.

A simple truth was that whether or not I was allowed close to Mercedes, attending the concert at all would, more than likely, mean the end of my dalliance with Toccara. There was no way she wouldn’t see enough to figure out that she was just a place holder for the woman I really loved, as much as I was capable. A large part of me wanted to be selfish. The thought of having both women in my bed, pleasuring me, each other and whomever I felt deserved the honor, was a decadent dream that I allowed myself in the dark hours. I had contemplated the idea of having Dr. Becher reeducate both Mercedes and Toccara simultaneously. However, after careful consideration, I decided that if I wanted to make that dream come true, it would need to be done in stages. I was confident that neither woman could possibly have outwitted or outmaneuvered me by themselves, however there was a small likelihood that as a team they would have proven to be more than I could handle. Still, six months to a year after I’d captured the affections of my premier obsession, compelling Toccara to join her would probably be child’s play.

The thought of having both women under my complete control was better than any drug or male enhancement on the market, and quite a few that weren’t. I fucked Toccara for several rounds of almost completely satisfying passion before I finally allowed her to rest. As she slept, it thought about what I’d learned from my contacts at the LAPD and Interpol over the previous week. The experiments I’d run on Grammy night and during my time in Eastern Europe had proven that the drug and antibiotic cocktail had worked as well as advertised. A total of ten women had ingested the combination. Of the ten, nine had been the victims of some truly remarkable gang rapes. I’d watched one Scandinavian co-ed take on a total of twenty-eight men. By the time they were finished with her, a couple of them were able to fist both her stretched out cunt and gaping asshole. Of those nine, six of them were pregnant, despite morning after measures. One had refused the pill due to her religious beliefs and one had just not taken with child. Only one had escaped completely unscathed. Her friends had noticed her strange behavior and gotten her out of the Crimean club before she could be taken advantage of. My own German stand-in for Mercedes had also gotten pregnant. But there were six other possible fathers so I didn’t concern myself with her. I doubted she’d have kept the child anyway…it was impossible to work a pole heavily with child.

As sleep claimed me, I smiled into the darkness. The time was coming that I would finally become a father myself. The child would belong to Mercedes Jones…whether she liked it or not. I’d decided and my will would be made manifest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all...I'm very sorry to say that I need to take a week off from posting. Real Life is kicking A&& and taking names. I have to travel for work the tenth through the fifteenth. You, my wonderful readers, will be treated to a new chapter sometime between August 18th and the 20th. 
> 
> Second of all...please don't let that stop you from dropping me a comment or review. I plan on doing a lot of hand writing while I'm on planes and in airports. I'll need tons of inspiration to get it all typed up when I get home. (I try to never travel for work with my personal laptop and I NEVER sign in to the fic sites on my work laptop.)
> 
> Finally...a million thanks to my Beta. I'm not going to put her business on front street, but real life is kicking her ass and she is still being a considerate and conscientious Beta. She Totally ROCKS!!! Everyone think great thoughts for her and her well being. 
> 
> TTFN,  
> Anni


	7. I Know Where I’ve Been (Hairspray) & I Feel Lucky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unique's summer & Xena makes progress in both her present and future ventures.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.  
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for having my back on the Beta reading no matter how crazy her real life gets.

Chapter 7

I Know Where I’ve Been (Hairspray)  
Unique PoV

There were quite a few blogs and articles online that spoke of different people’s experiences with their gender reassignment surgeries. There were even some people who posted their day to day lives from their diagnosis with gender dysphoria or dissonant identity disorder up through their surgery and recovery. It was interesting to read about the women who became their truest selves. I wasn’t sure if Tessa had infected me with her cray-cray need to research everything or if I was just following in the footsteps of my mentor in all things Divaness, Miz Mercedes Jones…in trying to prepare like a certain fictional Gryffindor know-it-all…but I did everything I could to be well prepared. This Diva devoured everything she could find written by women like me…who had been trapped inside a male body. All of them were informative. Most of them helped to infuse me with confidence. Some of them scared the ever-living shit out of me. Still, they all told the simple truth that every experience was different.

I’d read all the blogs. I’d been packed for weeks. I’d tried all I could to be prepared…I still wasn’t. I didn’t love having to stop my hormone treatments. Even only not taking them for thirty days as uncomfortable to me. My therapist thought that was simply a manifestation of my anxiety about my coming surgery. I didn’t agree with her. I just didn’t like feeling like a Kleenex commercial could start a crying jag that would last for an hour and lead to dehydration. On the Saturday after my fucking diva-licious shopping experience in Manhattan…God Bless Mercedes Jones, Ruth Mayzer, Kurt Hummel and their whole genetic lines BTDubs…my aunt, uncle and mom decide to do my last real meals for a while up big. We went out for breakfast, had my favorite take out for lunch and they invited Jake and Ryder over for a homemade dinner of all my favorites. It was the best dinner I’d had in a long time. My mom made her amazing fried chicken wings, my Uncle barbequed ribs and burgers and roasted some corn and other vegetables on the grill, my Aunt Wyn made some greens, and Jake brought me his potato salad. He said it was his Grandma’s recipe…I emphatically swore ups and downs that the woman who created that delight on a plate needed to be sainted and knighted. Oh, yes, it was that good.

After dinner, we played some board games, and I opened a gift from Jake’s parents, the Jones, the Evans and Triple S. They had gotten me three weeks’ worth of cotton nightgowns and robes and slippers. There was a note with them, “Read online that, much like after having a baby, you’ll probably ruin all the PJs that you take with you, so here are some that look good enough for a Diva to be seen in, but are also completely throw-away-able. A new set for every day. They are already washed and ready to pack. We love you and we’re praying for you!” I was deeply touched and there may have been tears. It wasn’t my fault…the hormones had been hell getting used to and yet it was somehow worse going without them.

Once I finished crying over that gift, Jake had to go and be all sweet and give me a Nintendo 3DS. “I was going to loan you mine…I really was. But I’m just not that good a person. I mean, three weeks is a long time to be missing my Mario Kart. So, I just got you one of your own. Now you’ll have something to keep your mind off your new hoo-haw…and I can still play myself to sleep at night.”

I rolled my eyes. “I swear you Pucker-men just refuse to just admit that you are big old softies to your people.” I laughed.

“Maybe…maybe we’re just assholes who have rare moments of kindness…you can’t prove otherwise.” He crowed back, making us all laugh. Not too long after that, he said his goodbyes. Chase had gotten back from spending the week with her grandparents that afternoon. I was pretty sure Mario Kart wasn’t gonna be what put Jake to sleep that night.

Ry and I were shooed to my room when we tried to help my family clean up the kitchen. “You got everything that you need?” He asked plucking nervously at a loose thread on my bed spread. I think he was more nervous about my having surgery that even I was.

“Yeah.” I replied. As I packed the things I’d gotten from Jake and his family, I showed him the small bag I had to take with me to the hospital the next day and the larger ones that would accompany my aunt and mom to the hotel. My uncle had to work so he’d be going back and forth visiting me in Columbus and being here in Lima to make it to his job on time. then I picked up the tote bag that contained the magazines and books I’d gotten to entertain myself with those first couple of days after the surgery. I added my new 3DS. “And once I’m feeling strong enough, I have my mom’s old iPad full of my summer reading list books.”

“Good, that’s good.” Ryder nodded. “I…uh…I got you something, to, ya know, take care of you for when I can’t be there.” He reached into the backpack he’d been lugging around all evening. It contained just one thing, a medium sized shiny teal gift bag.

I made a grabby hands motion. I was very sure that there would never be a time in my life when I wouldn’t enjoy getting gifts. I loved it. Ryder knew it, so he played keep away with the bag for a few minutes. But a few kisses and I was finally rewarded with my gift. I pulled out a soft, gray kitten lovie with a pretty pin ribbon around her neck. I, immediately, started to pet and cuddle the small stuffed toy. “Oh, she’s so soft and pretty. I think I’ll call her, Precious. Thank you, Ry.” Stupid hormones. I wasn’t supposed to ruin that simple statement of gratitude with tears.

“Hey,” he took me into his arms and held me close. “No, tears. This is about a happy thing. We’re celebrating a good thing. Two of them really. Not only are you about to become the you that you’ve always been inside. Your truest self. ‘Cause once you get all healed up, you’ve got that guy form Sony wanting you to come and sing for them…and you’ve got me. You’re in a good place.” He soothed.

“I know.” I sighed. “I know, it’s just…this is major. I mean I’ll be in surgery for a long ass time. It’s scary.”

“Yeah, I get it. I was scared when I had my tonsillectomy and that was a short surgery that they do a million times a day.” He acknowledged. “I can’t even begin to understand how scared you must be. But we all love you and we’ll all be praying for you. Did you ever make up your mind on whether or not you were going to get the breast augmentation?”

I’d been going back and forth on the idea of increasing the femininity of my upper body for the last several months. Basically, since they set my surgical date. I shrugged. “I still have time. It can’t be done Monday in any event. I’ve got six months to a year to make a choice on that one. I’m tending towards yes because Aretha, Chaka, Mariah, Jill Scott, Queen Bee…I mean, the word Diva is almost synonymous with having big tey-tas.”

“No, it’s not. What about Diana Ross, Donna Summers, Whitney Houston…Skinny Mariah…India Arie or Kelly Rowland?” He shot back. “You already have bigger breasts than most of them.”

“I’ve been a wonderful influence on you.” I smiled broadly. “Either way…that decision is quite a ways away.”

“True.” He chuckled and kissed me. “You’re beautiful. You don’t need those things in your body to make you beautiful. Heck, you’re already bigger than Lopez and she had the surgery.” We kissed and snuggled talking about everything and nothing…school, plans for the future, what time he and his parents would be able to come see me every day when I was in the hospital. How much I loved my Precious…how much we cared for and loved each other…until it was time for Ryder to leave if he wanted to make his curfew. We said our long kiss filled goodbye. There was no fear in that hug, but you could certainly feel that we were trying to reassure each other that everything would be fine. And it would. I took long hot showers that night and the next morning. My nails were bare of everything but a coat of clear, gel polish. Veronica had taken out my weave and deep conditioned my hair before she gave me a chin length bob of block braids. So, I felt as ready physically as humanly possible.

Morning came early. We had to be at the hospital by nine. My Aunt Wyn was the queen of punctuality, so we arrived at Wexler by half past eight. In preparation for my surgery, I couldn’t have anything but clear liquids…seriously the thickest, most filling thing I was allowed to have from the moment I woke up was white grape juice. It was less than happy. The admission paperwork was no joke. Even though we’d done some of it earlier when I’d come in to stockpile my own blood for the surgery. I was tagged like an animal in the wild with one of those fugly paper-plastic hybrid ID bracelets and then forced to remove even the clear nail polish. That was interesting…the gel didn’t come off easy. There was a pee test to take, only to find out the nurse hadn’t been supposed to give it to me since I couldn’t actually be pregnant. Still, it was nice to know that even before the surgery, I was feminine enough to make a trained medical professional make that mistake. My blood pressure was taken twice. It was kind of high the first time, so the nurse had me do a breathing exercise to help with the pre-surgery jitters and took it again. It was much better the second time.

Once I made it through all that, I was taken to my room left to change into my gown. It had to be a hospital gown that day. Oh, the humanity…that thing was so u-g-l-y it didn’t have an alibi. But I persevered. I saw my doctors. Dr. Blackburn-Knudsen checked on me first, but I saw all my doctors over the course of the morning. There was no need for shaving, thanks to the permanent hair removal procedures that had been one of the intermediate stages of my transition. But I was turned into the promised pin cushion as I received an IV and there were three blood pulls to make sure all was as it should be hemoglobin wise. Then they gave me something to ensure that I’d evacuated my bowels. I could have told them to just let me have coffee…but I guess they didn’t count that as a ‘clear’ liquid. It was a weird experience to have to poop that many times in one day and feel perfectly fine. Me, Mom and Wynn talked and watched TV. They left in the afternoon to go and check into their hotel, so one of the Nurses, a younger lady named Carla, and I went exploring. She was so kind…just incredibly supportive and cool. I showed her pictures of all my people and she took a picture of me in my fashion nightmare. It was all really fun.

After a bounteous dinner of chicken broth, apple juice, gelatin and an ice pop…I spent a ridiculous amount of time texting with everyone I knew to pass the time. When Mom and Aunt Wynn started arguing about who would stay with me and who would head back to the hotel; Mom was still over compensating a little bit for her initial reaction to me being trans; I stepped in and sent them both back and told them I’d see them bright and early. I was allowed to shower, but I had to forego any lotions or moisturizers. I did cheat a little bit. I used my acne wash and the after lotion for my face…but that was it. I didn’t sleep too badly. But I was awoken at seven to prep me for the actual surgery. By the time surgery prep was done, Mom and Aunt Wynn were there with Ryder and his mom. We got to talk for a little while, then I was being taken into the surgery suite. The anesthesiologist was a closet comedian. “Alright…say your alphabet backwards from Z to A.”

“Whoo Lordy, I can’t even do that…” I was out.

The surgery took a total of eleven hours. I was asleep…no I was something harder than asleep…for the entirety of it. The dreams, though, they were amazing. I loved every single one. I couldn’t remember exactly what they were…really it was more like one long dream with different chapters. I was happy, Ryder was there so were my friends. It was nice. Then I started coming out. Within minutes of getting out of recovery I had an epiphany. Born women pay the price for their femininity or for original sin…whatever…with their monthly menstrual and childbirth pain. Its stretched out over their entire lives. We trans-women pay that due with the pain of the surgery. All at Muthafuckin’ ONCE. Thankfully, once I’d answered a few questions to assure the recovery room staff that I was cognizant of place, time and aware of my identity…they gave me drugs.

That turned out to be an adventure in and of itself. Other than my hormones, I wasn’t a medication user. We didn’t have any way to guess which ones would cause side effects and which ones would work as directed. Hydromorphone caused nausea…then they gave me Phenergan…which made me high as a fucking kite. I was totally a diva kite. Oxycodone scared me so much I started crying. Not my most diva like moment, but I was totally still high. Then they gave me regular morphine. That was fine. So, I was on it regularly, like every four hours, for the first twenty-four hours after my first dose. Then they hooked my back up to a machine that allowed me to control my dosages. I think I did that shit wrong. I started doing it every few hours, maybe three and a half. But then I started thinking I was going to get hooked so I made myself wait longer and longer until I wouldn’t pump the button until the pain was being a total and complete bitch. But ultimately it didn’t really make much of a difference…after seventy-two hours on the PCA, they moved me off the pump and onto orally administered Tylenol 3. I took T3 for the rest of my stay.

Doctors Christofiles, my urologist, and Robinson, my plastic surgeon, were the doctors I saw the most after the surgery. But Dr. Grogg…the OB, was the one who had to teach me how to dilate my new vagina after the packing was removed on morning of the sixth day. That was a whole lot of awkward. Ryder and Jake almost peed themselves laughing when I told them about that HSM. I punished them by making them go to the store and get me more KY and condoms to cover the dilators. They totally cheated and went to see Vince’s sister Netta and she hooked them up. When Dr. Grogg took the packing away, I didn’t look…the blogs hadn’t failed me yet, so I knew there was no need to even peep. I also got rid of the catheter. Praise Jesus, I could finally leave the bed. The shower was calling my full and entire name. Getting into the shower, though, that was interesting. It almost felt like I needed to relearn movement without the hated appendage in the way. I also finally looked at my new hoo-haw. One other thing I figured out during those first few days after the packing was removed, I learned to spend the fifteen to twenty minutes of private dilation time, three times a day to listen to my some of my Western Civ summer reading books on tape. It was a damn good use of the time.

I had been in the hospital for seven days…healing really well and hoping that I’d get out the next day…when I started spiking a fever. I had an infection. I immediately started to freak all the way out, but I ended up being more than somewhat blessed. The infection was not in any of the surgical incisions nor was it inside and pervasive. It was a simple site infection where the epidural had been placed then removed. However, Dr. Blackburn-Knudsen decided that it was better to be safe versus sorry so I had to stay in Wexler for seven more days because of the administration of the cefoxitin, an IV antibiotic. After that was finished, I needed to wait until I was able to evacuate my bowels without chemical assistance. With that accomplishment under my belt, I was able to move to the hotel for another two weeks. Both Mom and Aunt Wynn had needed to return to work, but Uncle Timothy still had vacation time and he, Ryder, Jake, RJC and Mary Hart all made sure that I was never alone. I’d gone back on a lower dose of my estrogen on day three, but over the time in the hospital and during my follow-up visits during those two weeks, they got my levels exactly where they wanted them and my prescription could once again be filled at a regular pharmacy going forward. Once that was done, I was happy to get home, even if I was still forced to wear the DVT prevention stockings for a while.

Recovery wasn’t the fastest thing. Pain wasn’t my friend…but it was a constant companion at first. But drugs scared me more than pain hurt, so I didn’t take anything heavier than Aleve after I left Columbus and returned to Lima, though. I had plans and they did not include opioid addiction. I’d finally made it home the day before Father’s Day. And that Monday, I was treated to a surprise visit from Mamma-Mercedes and Pappa-Kurt…and Sam, Puck, Blaine, Tessa and everyone else I’d not seen since I visited them before my surgery. “Girl, you gave us a scare when Ryder said you’d gotten an infection.” Mercedes said as she looked me over as hard as a mother bear with a cub gone from her sight too long.

“You act like we haven’t talked at least three times a week since I left New York.” I laughed. Lord have His mercy…we Divas sure were drama queens. I’d talked to everyone in that living room at least once or twice a week during my time in Columbus. Tessa and Joe heard my voice every single day. If I didn’t call them, they called me.

Santana had been looking me over herself while I greeted everyone. “Your surgeon did good work. If I didn’t know, I probably wouldn’t guess. I mean, seriously? Did they give you hip implants?”

Artie swatted her and called her rude but I just I chuckled. “Nope…no need, Wade Adams was always meant to be me. I had hips long before I ever started hormones.” I confessed.

“How are you feeling?” Tessa asked carefully. “And don’t lie…your eyes are already getting tight.”

“Fine, I hurt…but it’s down from hurting like a son-of-a-bitch to just feeling like aw-damn-naw.” I blurted. “I feel a sense of accomplishment that I managed to get up, showered, dressed and out here and was still able to get up and open the door when you guys got here.”

Brittany came and gave me a hug that literally felt like sunshine and rainbows. “It will be okay. The hardest part is out of the way. It will only get better from here.”

I boo-hooed all over her. I might never have been able to put into words why…but I cried out all the fear and hurt and pain and it felt like it was all replaced with joy and warmth and love. Brittany and Mamma-Mercedes just sat there and hugged me as I had my catharsis cry. They dragged my ass out of the house…it was good. We picked up Ryder and Jake from their ‘office’ and took them with us. They were in between their morning and afternoon appointments so the timing was perfect. We had lunch at Bonefish Grill and I was taken over by a feeling that I’d turned a major corner.

I really needed that day out to get my mind right…to remind me why I’d gone through the surgery. Why it has been so vital to me that my body and my mind matched each other. When I had my next appointment with my psychiatrist Dr. Clark, she noted that I seemed ready to move forward.

“You just don’t know. I’d let how much things hurt make me start to doubt how much it was all worth it.” I’d never lied in any of my sessions with Dr. Clark. It seemed counterproductive as hell, so I didn’t do it.

“You feel differently now?”

I nodded. “I got a reminder from a very good friend that I was over the hump. Getting to and through the surgery was the hardest part. We, because it’s not just been me by myself on this journey, we’ve made it too far to let my own head dick myself in the game. And a huge part of healing is mental.”

She nodded. “That is very true. Sounds like you have gotten to a much better head space than you were the last time we spoke.” Dr. Emile Clark then did something I had come to expect when she’d been wanting to ask something and yet was giving me my time to speak on what I needed to get out and express. She smiled super brightly and got all chipper. “So, College soon…I know it’s probably too early in the summer for you to be starting to work on all those campus needs checklists. But are you getting ready mentally for that next life step? There can be a lot of drama surrounding being Trans on campus. Especially somewhere like OSU and even more when you’re talking about living in the dorms.”

“I’m not really all that worried about it. My name change went through in April. You know how important it was to me to graduate as me and not as him. Coach Sylvester was really helpful on that front…which to this day kinds of shocks the hell out of me. She called me Rupaul even at the senior awards dinner. I’ve already started the process of changing my driver’s license. I’ve told you about Mr. Antwan, right?” I paused.

“The gentleman whose daughter outed you at Carmel, but he and his husband have been mentoring you since they met you?” she clarified.

“Yes, Mr. Antwan is awesome. He is also a lawyer. He got me a Declaration of Gender Change form and it was signed, sealed and delivered before I even made it out of Wexler. When I got back to Lima, my notification letter was waiting on me and I’m going to go and get my new license next Monday…after Ms. Veronica works her weave magic over me on Saturday.” I was almost singing as I talked I was so happy.

“And the reason you aren’t worried about the dorm situation?” She pointedly led me back to her original topic.

I shrugged. “I’m not worries about it because this Diva will not be living in the dorms.”

“Really, are you planning on driving from Lima every day for classes?”

I shook my head. “I was worried about the probable outcomes of living in the dorms. None of them seemed very positive. And really, the thought of community bathrooms was giving me nightmares. Two of my friends from high school, their bestie, a more recent friend, though he was classmates with the first two I mentioned his boyfriend they had made plans to rent a place off campus. They found one they could afford and it had an extra room. When they found out that I’d be doing OSU for my freshman year, they offered me the spare room. So, now I don’t have to worry about living in the dorms with the pretty-pretty princesses or even worse some closet hiding, good old boy fool who thinks that my body should be his wonderland no matter how I feel on the subject.”

“And your friends all accept Unique?”

I laughed. “I’ve always been Unique to them. I mean, yes, I was still Wade some of the time when we first met, and they knew that I was born male. But Finn, my first day in show choir he asked what I wanted him to call me, and it sure as hell wasn’t Wade.”

She made another note on her pad. “And you feel safe living with these friends?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.” I almost shouted in outrage, taking offense on their behalves. I took a deep breath, because, who knew that shouting would make my new va-jay-jay unhappy. “Sorry…but…yeah, you don’t know them, so you don’t understand how wrong you asking that was. Lauren…she’s such a badass…but with an amazingly kind heart for her people. Not all people, don’t get it confuseded…she doesn’t actually like a large preponderance of human beings. But that’s because she thinks most people are stupid, superficial, judgy assholes. She sure as hell ain’t wrong, either. Finn…at first glance, Finn was a total cliché dude-bro jock type. Then you find out that he might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer…but he wasn’t the dullest either. When he tries, he can be incredibly accepting because he is used to being underestimated and dismissed as lesser. Vince…he is…with the shit he’s been through, he would totally be perfectly within his rights to be typical ‘angry black guy’ but every time I’ve talked to him…he’s been kind and encouraging and, yeah, nosy as hell. He’s from Texas and I’m the first Trans person he knows for sure he’s met. Still, he’s already told me that if I have any trouble next year, to let him know first. Probably because he knows that Lauren will just break a fool’s head without forcing them to understand the error of their ways…but still.”

“And the other two…the boyfriend and girlfriend?” she prodded.

I chuckled. “You don’t listen so good for a shrink Doc.” I teased. “The last two are gay boys. I went to school with Dave, like Finn and Lauren, he was two years ahead of me. He was on the football team with Finn…and Finn is Pappa Kurt’s brother BTDubs…anyway. Dave is still kind of closeted…but he and LaKeith have been dating since before Easter. I trust them. They didn’t have to offer me this chance. They did it because they worried that I wouldn’t be safe in the dorms.”

“Sounds like you have a good support system in place.” Dr. Clark asked in her statement.

“I’m lucky. I know that. My mom may not have dealt well at first, but she came around a lot quicker than most Trans kids’ parents do. She really does accept me for who I really am. I went through some pretty bad bullying at Carmel…but then I landed at McKinley and that was a blessing like you wouldn’t believe. Everything since then has been so good it’s almost scary. I have friends that I know I can count on to have my back. A lot of people like me never find that, ya know?”

“That is true. You’ve been very lucky. So, you’ve crossed this hurdle. You’ve got college to look forward to. What is frightening you about the future?” she asked me quietly. Thankfully, our hour was up, so I didn’t have to answer it. I’d have until our next session to think that one through.

The drive back to Lima was quiet. Mary seemed to sense my need for introspection. Sometimes, the turn in her behavior towards me, still made me wary. But according to her, she’d been reading her bible trying to find the words to convince Joe to make better choices in who he called friends, when she stumbled across Matthew Twenty-fifth chapter, fortieth verse. “It was like He slapped my face with His Truth.” She’d told me quietly. “I felt so ashamed. Whether I think you are right or not…if God didn’t want you here as you are, you wouldn’t be. When I realized that, I couldn’t help but ask myself, by what right did I have to second guess the Lord and His plan for you? I didn’t have any right. I had to treat you better. I read up on what you were going through. Not to be funny, but if the Lord thought that you had to go through all of that…you’d need someone to make your row a little easier to hoe.” I thanked her for her help and her honesty. We all had our own walk with the Lord. Hopefully, Mary’s ‘Come to Jesus’ moment was a lasting change.

It took me a few days of thought before I really had an answer for Dr. Clark. Our next session started with her reasking the question. “I’m not afraid of the future. I’m anxious about some parts of it; moving mine and Ryder’s relationship into a sexual one, whether or not Remi Doelp was seriously going to sign me to Sony music, whether or not Mamma-Mercedes was going to introduce me to Queen Bey. All of those make me giddy and anxious. I guess I fear going outside my comfort zone and finding all the horrors and hatred for the Trans-community that I see on the news and online. But for the most part…I’m looking forward to the future and what it’s going to bring.”

And that was nothing less than the truth. Because in that moment in time, I was happy. I was healing. I was brave and a diva…I was Unique.

 

I Feel Lucky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)  
Xena PoV

Time was definitely not a dude. I was sure of it once we started the ball rolling on SBX and our ventures in Goldfield. Time was a chick because she could be sweet and kind or a massive bitch. I said that simply because, we were ready to get our shit started. The utility runs were begun five days after the beginning of the New Year. I don’t know that any of us expected it to take so damn long. They didn’t start the actual building of the brothel proper until half-way through April. It seemed as if everything took forever when it came to the building of our primary property. When they first started the runs, I talked to Attorney Harris and got a copy of his wife’s paper on prostitution as a business and me, Blair and Slickback all read it to get ideas on how to do things right.

We used that to make some serious decisions. We run the strip club and the brothel different from most. Our dancers and stable wouldn’t be independent contractors, they’d be employees. As such, they would get a base hourly pay and then the dancers would keep their tips and the Featured Entertainers would make a commission of thirty to thirty-five percent per appointment. That would let us put them on our medical insurance that we’d need to have since we were going to have maids and managers and cooks and everything else employed there too. That wasn’t how it was usually done, but it seemed like much of the way it was usually done kind of sucked ass. So, we decided to do it our why and pray that it worked out. Another thing we learned from Dr. Walters-Harris’s paper was that we would need to make sure that each Featured Entertainer had the option of turning down any customer without having to pull that out price them bullshit. Slickback pointed out that we’d need security on site to enforce the FE’s decisions. Some people couldn’t handle rejection. We added a security station and security offices to both the brothel and the hotel. With a bar onsite on the hotel, and the fact that the Featured Entertainers weren’t going to be working the hotel and customers weren’t allowed in either of the dorms, we thought there might better be security stations in those two also.

We worked out how many people we’d need in the three main aspects of our principal and secondary ventures. There would be administration or management, guest-slash-customer services, and support staff. The administration would be headed primarily by jointly Blair and Slickback…but we were all sure that we needed to hire people who really knew what they were doing to manage the hotel, we knew the sex trade…hospitality, not a much. Blair would be the head of the guest or customer services line of things. She’d taken a lot of online courses since we started things to learn what she needed to know…but even she admitted the most important stuff had come from Dr. Walters-Harris’s papers. She’d found others online and devoured them all. Blair wasn’t stupid, and Dr. Amanda Walter-Harris knew business better than anyone else we’d looked into. Best of all, if Blair had a question, Attorney Harris didn’t mind getting her an answer from his super-intelligent wife.

Even with all of that going on, it still seemed as if things were moving at a snail’s pace. I thought that I was a patient, pragmatic person…but no. I was not. I hated the waiting. More than Slickback and Blair. So, the two of them put their heads together and decided that if I had something that I could do to help me both pass the time and to feel as if I was pulling my weight on our venture. “Alright, look, you’ve got resources we just ain’t got. We’re not going to hire an interior decorator bitch for this. They’d probably try and make it all look like a brothel and shit. We know what we’re running…but that shit ain’t gonna look like no fucking brothel. If a mutherfucker takes a selfie in our place…that shit ain’t gonna fuck them in the game at home.” Slickback told me in his own inimitable way.

“So, what, you want me to…”

“Look into that shit and start working that shit out. You’ve got the blue prints. You know what we’re trying to do with our shit. Put some shit together and figure out what that shit is gonna cost. We can get this shit built but until we get the place outfitted and everything we can’t open. So, you do you and let us know what to get and what paint we need and all that good shit.” He made me laugh.

But it worked. For a while. The thing was that as the building progressed there were problems. First problem was that we had three, technically four, different builds start with in the same six-week time period. That may have been stupid on our part, but we were impatient and we were determined. We had no way to run the brothel if the dorms weren’t there. It would be too hard to make sure that our people were taken care of if they lived all the way in Vegas or wherever and there wasn’t really anywhere for them to live in Goldfield as it stood in that moment. Apparently, we should have built in a contingency for all the normal hiccups that happen in building what basically amounted to two hotels and two dorms…which were just specialty hotels. There were problems with the pools going in, problems with stuff going over budget…stuff like that. By the time it was time for us to leave on the tour, I was coming onto crunch time for picking all the paint colors. But I’d come to a realization. We didn’t have enough money to get everything built, outfitted and staffed.

I called Slick and Blair and ran down the numbers of the staff we’d need to get things up and running…the way we wanted them to be. “Damn, Girl…maybe we need to win the lottery too.” Slick joked frustratedly.

“We’ve invested too much in this for it to go under before we even get started.” Blair sighed. “What are we going to do?”

“We have enough to get things built. We have enough to get things outfitted right. We’ll concentrate on that right now.” I suggested. “This is a different thing, but it’s the same shit as all our lives. We manage what we can and take on the next step as they come. That’s all we can do.”

So that’s what we did. I got my ass on the ladies’ tour bus, which was tricked out as hell. It was great. Every single bunk was long enough for me. The sheets looked and felt amazing. The blankets were warm and happy. The buses had superior wi-fi. And each bunk had an iPad to augment my laptop. I was able to look up a million different things and one of them was what states participated in the multi-state Mega Millions and Powerball lottery draws. It was pretty much everywhere. In fact, only five states didn’t participate. So, I came up with a system. I went with the same numbers that we’d played back in the day in OKC, my birthday and age, Blair’s birthday and age and Slickback’s birthday. We were all born in September, I used that for the Powerball number. That was the first ticket, the remaining four on the card were always quick picks. I played a two pull multi draw on each game. That was thirty bucks a week…thirty bucks a state, it wasn’t a lot of money. But it was ten times what we’d spend back in the day when the chance to win a hell of a lot of money was our gifts to each other for birthdays and Christmas. Me and Blair more than Slickback. Blair had dreams of never again turning tricks. I had dreams of making that happen for her.

I knew that because of how me and Blair were, lots of people assumed that I was a lesbian. That wasn’t it. Blair and I were sisters, not of blood, but of trauma. I’d had to explain that so some of the newbies within our first days on the bus. Me and Blair, we understood each other in much the same way Vets who’d been through war together got each other. That was probably insulting to Vets or something. They actually went through war… Anyway, I wasn’t gay. I just didn’t see any point at all in a long-term relationship with some dude when there wasn’t anything they could do for me that I couldn’t do for myself. I needed them for orgasms once or twice a month…other than that, I took care of myself on that end too. Blair and Slickback, they were family. So were Sam and Mercedes and Puck. Shit, Sam had helped us out by tweaking the blueprints I’d bought and Mercedes helped me come up with a color palette and such…okay mainly, she let me bounce ideas off her and told me when the paint I was going to pick would clash with the floors we were pretty sure that we were going to use. Puck, he got me the name of George’s supply guys and they were able to get me info to negotiate with our suppliers. Kurt was really awesome too. He made sure that I got the differences in things like wallpaper…way too expensive for our budget and regular paint versus semi-gloss…things like that.

I had some good friends. And I made some more on the tour that summer. Sugar Motta was the first and probably the most surprising. Of all the summer people, she was the last one I was expecting to become my buddy. I was sitting in the front lounge as we were heading down to Philly, trying to figure out the best colors for the first floor when she plopped down next to me. “My Daddy always says that no matter what all those color shrinks say, warm neutrals are the way to go for the most pleasant hotel lobbies. And my cousin Sareah, she runs a service kind of like what you and your friends are trying to get off the ground. She says that making sure everything looks professional and businesslike helps the customers remember to act professional and businesslike and makes your service providers feel like they have real jobs so they aren’t so ashamed and everything.”

“That’s cool.” I said and picked the ‘Chaise Mauve’, a warm neutral, over the ‘Silverpointe’, a cool blue tone. “So…what can you tell me about thread count?”

“I can tell you that Daddy says that those hotel supply people are total rip-off’s. Their prices might be good, but their stuff is basically trash. I’ll get you the information for his contact at Macys. That’s where he gets all the linens and bed clothes for his properties. He buys them in bulk so he gets great prices.” Sugar said happily.

From there a friendship was born. Sugar was great. She was so damn happy. She had an innocence to her that I just wanted to protect…but she also had a blasé, kind of attitude to my background and current business venture. As promised she hooked me up with her father’s contacts and she helped me figure out the number of linens we’d need for the hotel, brothel and dorm. By the time we reached North Carolina, most of the other chicks on the bus had listened in and asked me about things and were even putting in their own ideas. Right before we pulled into Fayetteville, Marceau came to me with a crazy idea she had for our whole deal. “Think about this. Nevada law basically stipulates that your people…your featured entertainers, I think you said y’all decided to call them…have to get tested monthly. That will get really expensive, really quick. What if you somehow managed to get a doctor to work there…take care of the stable? Maybe even see the townspeople if they need it.”

“That wouldn’t be a bad thing. I know that you’re planning on getting all your people on insurance, so the cost would be lower for testing than if you did it the old-fashioned way, but still. An on-staff doctor could make sure that your stable is tested for STDs and keep the fems dosed properly birth control wise. Plus, it would make your record keeping for the state regulators a lot easier. But, how would you guys manage to get one?” Sugar was kind of confused.

I thought about it for a long time. Marceau had a point. Plus, too if we had a doctor on site…heart attacks in the rooms wouldn’t be such a massive deal. “You know, one of Blair’s old regulars is a doctor…he was actually an OBGyn, until his wife died of cancer. They didn’t have any kids…she was his whole world. So, after she died, he had money, so he just sold his practice and kind of stopped living. Blair was his only non-necessity excursion he made every month. She’s stopped turning tricks, but he’ll call Blair just to check on her. They are close. So, I was thinking, maybe we could check with him to see if he wanted to get back into the medical game and help a town where the nearest doctor is two and half hours away.” I explained to her.

“If you can work it out… that would be pretty awesome. Even if that particular guy doesn’t want to do it, maybe you should check in with somebody fresh out of their residency. Maybe somebody who didn’t come from money and so they have a boat load of student loans.” Sugar suggested.

“Yeah,” Dee chimed in. “If you can work it out to give them an office and they can see town people and keep that money you could probably get away with paying them less.”

That made sense to me. Once I crunched the numbers on how much the testing would cost for the number of salons we were hoping to run, I emailed Slickback and told him about the idea and he was all over it. There was a med school right there in OKC and he had no problem charming a chick in their comptroller’s office to find out who had the most student debt among their residents. We actually had four names before I’d figured out where we could work the medic office into the design. Ultimately, we figured out that we’d save enough to make up for the loss of one party rooms. So, one of the seven was repurposed for a Medical Center, complete with its own bathroom. Then I had to read up on what all we’d need to set that up…which meant more money. Still, I concentrated on what I could control and kept playing our numbers.

By the time we wrapped up in Atlanta, all three builds were going strong. I’d submitted the beginning of the interior design stuff and we’d placed the orders for all the paint and all the flooring. I was asked as politely as Slickback could manage if I would continue on in looking into furnishings and everything else. It was really polite too. He only cussed twice in every sentence. Apparently, Blair had been making him read up on proper management etiquette. It was really hilarious. Still, I was woman enough to handle it. Okay, the twelve other women on the Ladies Bus, including Kat Pearson, the lady trucker and wife of our other driver Marty…we were woman enough to handle it. I mean, in the end I had three spreadsheets with like twenty-three different worksheets in each. It was a lot of work.

Honey Pots, we’d finally agreed on a name for the brothel-slash-strip club, would have two bars, one with a game room like lounge, the club, an indoor pool with hot tub, two hot tub suites…they would be rentable by the hour for couples or polys who wanted to get their freak on in a non-native and non-traditional environment…it was Santana and/or Brittany’s idea. And those were just the public areas. The private staff only areas would include the utility rooms, so the HVAC stuff and the water heaters…not including all the tankless ones that were part of the water system Sam had designed for us…the electric room, a big ass server room, that Artie and Darcy’s cousin Lauren had designed for us…they were also creating our website for us. The site was going to be pretty sweet. It would let customers chat or IM with our Feature Entertainers, pick their favorite and schedule appointments. Plus on Friday nights, those people with a certain paid subscription could watch the Featured Entertainers when they danced in the club. It would be an extra revenue stream that didn’t cost us anything and would be cheaper for most people than actually going to a strip club.

Anyway, the private areas would also have a staff lounge, the janitorial room and a big ass laundry center that would keep our linens and everything clean as a regular hotel. Our Head of Housekeeping would go over the rooms with a black light and luminol once a week. We were running a clean joint in every possible way. The first floor would hold the entrance lobby, the main bar which was inside the strip club. That would but up against the selection gallery where walk in customers would select from the available Featured Entertainers…then they would pay in the business office and use the elevator lobby to go up to one of the party rooms. Again, those were the parts the public saw. There would also be a full kitchen that served pub food in the club and bars, and simple room service fare for the party rooms.

The second and third floors each held a dozen play rooms that would comfortable hold up to four people. Each had a small, three piece, bathroom and a closet…like a real bedroom. they also had an intercom system that connected the rooms to the business office in case the customer wanted to make changes to the party, and to the security office in case the Featured Entertainer needed their assistance. The customers could also rent the play rooms like they could rent the hot tub suites…but it was a premium charge…so we’d make good money either way. The fourth floor was where the bulk of the fantasy rooms would be. Ten rooms that had different themes, an old west saloon, a Victorian drawing room, a BDSM playroom, the deck of a pirate ship, a locker room, a mini-movie soundstage and the four different common rooms from Harry Potter, without any of the coats of arms…no one wanted to piss off Ms. Rowling. Then there were two more fantasy rooms on the next floor up…both of them were set up as teeny bopper bedrooms. None of our stable would be under twenty-one, but if their customer wanted age play that was a service we were willing to provide. We were seventy-nine percent positive that we’d saved the daughter of one of Slickback’s girl’s regulars back in OKC. He’d hired the blonde, blue eyed cheerleader looking girl once or twice a week, every week for years. When the daughter went off to college, he started drifting off, until summer, then he’d be back. So, yeah, if some creeper wanted to pay one of our crew to call him daddy and it kept him from touching his own kid…we were so willing to do that shit. Hell, I’d fucking hit my back to make sure that nobody had to go through that shit.

The fantasy rooms were bigger than the play rooms and could hold more people. Their bathrooms were more luxurious too, to keep the fantasy going. The closets of those rooms held even more toys, condom and lube than the closets in the regular play rooms. Murphy beds were also hidden in the décor whenever necessary and whenever we could manage it. The two fantasy rooms on the sixth floor wouldn’t be alone. There would also be six party rooms on that floor. Those would be our biggest rooms and would hold the most people. Like the play and fantasy rooms, they would be rentable for stag and hen parties, or for adventurous customers who had no need for the services of the Featured Entertainers. Or the customers could hire the FEs who didn’t mind playing large groups and orgies. The last room up there would be the medic’s office, which would have a private staircase and tiny private elevator. That was costing more than I wanted to add to the budget, but Artie reminded me that not everyone who’d need to see the doctor would be able to climb the stairs.

There was a lot of stuff that I knew and more that I didn’t. So, I talked to people. I needed to know about professional kitchens, so, when we went to a really nice restaurant; I’d go and talk to their kitchen managers to find out what would be needed and how things should be set up. In talking to a lady when we were in Atlanta, I realized that she was in a fucked-up home situation. Thankfully, she didn’t have kids, but her boyfriend was a real piece of work. But he controlled her finances and had her on lockdown. I told her that if she could get out there, she could bunk with Helen until things were up and running. I gave her the cash I’d had on me which wasn’t a lot. But then Sugar, Marceau, Dee and all the other girls from my bus, who knew they’d been eavesdropping and taking notes when they saw me slip away, they all pooled their cash and Melissa, that was her name, she had enough that she didn’t even have to go home that night. Between the twelve of us, okay about half of it was Sugar, we managed to give her over three grand. Her boss, who knew more than he had ever let Melissa know he knew, told her she could either stay at his place that night and fly out in the morning or he would take her on down to the airport that night. Several of the other cooks and waiters had been sticking back money, trying to figure out how to help her too. They added another twenty-one hundred to what we were able to give her.

“Thank you, ladies, so much for helping her.” Guy, her boss, said hugging all of us. “None of us had a way to get her out. We’re all locals and her boyfriend would track her down at our places. He wants to be a professional wrestler and he could kick our asses, easy. We didn’t want to get her out and he kill her when he found her. With somewhere to go, somewhere far away and a job soon to keep her there…now Melissa will be safe.” I couldn’t really blame Guy for not doing more. He was barely bigger than Blaine Anderson and nowhere near as cut. Besides, if a chick wasn’t ready to leave helping them out just caused more troubles than it solved. But Melissa was ready to go. So much so that she had Guy take her straight to the airport and left her car in a park and ride parking lot near the restaurant. We wished her well and I made sure that she had my fellow, former Warrior Princess’ cell phone number for when she landed in Vegas.

I called Large Marge and let her know that she was getting a wounded bird who would make a killer Kitchen Manager, she been Guy’s assistant manager for five years so she was more than qualified. Helen agreed to take good care of her. She wouldn’t be the first wounded bird we’d helped out. Women like Melissa who wanted to live but had nowhere to go, often ended up on the streets. It was easiest to take in the ones who didn’t have kids, but we’d been known to help moms too…it was just harder to keep them from going back. Seeing your kids go hungry can make a woman decide that being a punching bag is worth it to feed them. “Hey, Zee, I’ve been taking classes online since I got here… think maybe your Melissa could help me learn to be a bar manager instead of just a bartender?”

I shrugged. “Ask her. It will give her something to do until we have a kitchen for her to manage and you know Slickback would love to have a bar manager that we know we can trust.” I told her honestly.

“Alright, I’ll ask her when she gets here.” Helen seemed happy with the thought.

The rest of the Atlanta trip was good. But even the trip to Six Flags, man did I love roller coasters, didn’t make me feel better than helping that wounded bird fly. So, it was with that on my mind that I went into a truck stop gas station, in Lexington, South Carolina, while the buses were fueling up before we reached Columbia and I laid down my thirty bucks to play Mega Millions and Powerball for that night, the next night and the following Tuesday and Wednesday. I noted that the prize was already up to almost four hundred million. But I knew that I would be happy with a tenth of that. Columbia was an easy concert. The clothes were cool and the fans were amazingly hype. We had a break after the concert, a whole four nights before the Limans in the band and crew, and the others who were using their free flights to spend their weekends with their dads, would join us in Charleston. Hudson was kind enough to give us the name of the hotel we’d be staying in in the coastal city…so me, the Dam Bros, Dee, Joseph, Marceau, and a couple of the others who didn’t really have dads, or they were too far away to make the trip for only a couple of days…we headed down to Charleston and got a couple of hotel rooms on the beach.

It was a great break. We spent every day on the beach from ten or eleven in the morning until sunset. Then we went back to the room and washed off the ocean…had dinner and I worked on my design plans. It was amazing what all I could find and order online. I was having such a nice, relaxing time…it wasn’t until I was watching the news on Thursday morning and they were talking about how a single ticket sold in Lexington, South Carolina had won the entire four hundred and eighty-seven million dollar Jackpot the night before. My hands were shaking as I dug through my purse for the special little coupon holder that Hudson had given us the summer before, when we didn’t have the per diem cards and had to get reimbursed for our expenses and therefore had to keep track of the receipts. Inside I had Powerball and Mega Millions tickets from eight states and the District of Columbia. All of them were arranged neatly by date and I’d dutifully completed the name, address and signature information on the back of every single one. I pulled up the site to check my numbers against the winners. Sixteen…check, My birthday. Three…Blair’s birthday…check. Twenty-Four…my age…check. Ten…Slickback’s birthday…check. Twenty-eight…Blair’s age…Check. And Nine…for September…the month we were all born. HOLY MUTHERFUCKING SHIT.

It took me four tries before I managed to call Attorney Ethan’s office number. Cleotha could barely understand me to put me through. “Xena, everything okay…the Dam Brothers didn’t get arrested did they. They are from Kentucky, they should know how to act in the south.”

“I think…I’m holding a Powerball ticket and the numbers match the website.” I squeaked out.

“Holy Mutherfucking Shit.” He breathed. “I’m gonna need you to repeat that for me…because it sounded like you just said you won the lottery. A lottery worth almost five hundred million dollars.”

“I think I did.” I whispered. “And I don’t know what to do now. Don’t get it twisted. I know what I need to do with fifty-five or sixty million of it. We didn’t have enough money to staff the places we’re building. We can create five hundred jobs in a county that is basically a ghost town right now. I figured that if I could win enough for five years of payroll…roughly fifty-eight and a half million, we should be able to get off the ground and be making enough to cover that plus make a nice profit…ya know? The plan was for me to work with KAMA and send what I don’t make into the business for other overhead costs until then. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.” I babbled.

“Well, first off fill out and sign the back of the ticket.” He advised.

“I did that before I left the gas station.” I assured him.

“Okay good. Look, don’t tell anyone else. Okay? I’m going to call Saul Mayzer. He’ll know what to do. In fact, I’ll get Hannah and Franklin to watch EJ and Avery…me and Amanda could use a nice weekend in Charleston. Probably Saul and Mills will like it too.”

“Okay…I can do that. We’ve got practice this afternoon. I’ll just concentrate on the day to day stuff I can control.”

“Exactly…great plan. We’ll probably be there tonight.” He said quietly.

I carefully put everything neatly back into the coupon holder and that neatly into my bag. I took a nice long shower and made a few decisions. I wasn’t moving out of my apartment. I liked it. I might add some more personal touches…but that was it. I would have a nice condo in Goldfield when everything was said and done out there. I might invest in a beach house there in Charleston though…it was the favorite of all the places I’d been since leaving Oklahoma City. I wasn’t quitting my job any sooner than I’d originally planned. I loved my job. I loved Sam, Cede and Puck and I wouldn’t repay their kindness and loyalty with anything less. I wanted to start a charity to give foster kids money to go to college…or give money to it if there already was one. I was going to totally change our tech plans for the venture. Artie and Lauren had both said that iMacs would let us keep information on our clients far more securely. Blair, Slickback and I hadn’t thought we could afford to do that. But if we were able to almost guarantee confidentiality…yeah, that would be a good thing. I was also going to pay our tech gurus more than the two years of subscriptions to Hulu and Netflix that Lauren had wanted and the fifteen hundred bucks Artie swore was good enough.

After my shower, I packed my room up. If I checked my bag to make sure the ticket was still there…that wasn’t crazy. We all met in the lobby and if I was a little bit quiet, no one seemed to notice. There was no trouble meeting up with the rest of our crew at the TD Arena where the buses were congregated as the roadies got to work. The night was good. We got to meet more of Cassidy’s family. They were cool people her young nephews were at that age where they knew that they liked the way girls were different from them. Felix and Frankie were world class peepers. They managed to see all of us ladies in different states of undress over the course of the evening. But then, their father caught them. Boy, he let them have it. The, admittedly, adorable twin ten-year olds both got swats on their backsides and a serious lecture about respecting others and women especially. It was a pretty boss lecture. Then he made the dastardly duo apologize to every single lady, individually. I liked him. That was A-plus parenting…and for a change I didn’t mean that sarcastically.

I was surprised and then again, not really, when we got to the buses to find Saul and Mills Mayzer and Ethan and Amanda Harris waiting on us. Attorney Ethan showed up and introduced me to his wife. Amanda Walters-Harris was pretty and petite, but she was so smart it was easy to forget the physical side of things. They told their Niece and Nephews that they had caught the concert and it was amazing. They actually had two hotel rooms at the nearby Renaissance Charleston Historic District Hotel. They pulled Cede, Puck and Sam to the side and told them that they needed to keep me there the next morning, but would put me on a plane to Jacksonville as soon as they could the next afternoon. I absolutely loved that my bosses didn’t ask any questions.

The next morning, Saul and Ethan and I drove back up to Columbia. It took us longer than we would have liked to complete the claims form and all the necessary paperwork it took to remain anonymous. I’d really lucked out in the fact that I even could. It was rare for the states to allow it. Saul, Ethan and I had discussed it the whole way up and given my age and lifestyle and what I was wanting to do with it. I wasn’t going to get the lump sum payout. Instead I would take the yearly annuity option. Ultimately, it would be best for me tax wise and since I wasn’t old it wasn’t like I would for certain die before the full thirty years had passed. I wouldn’t get the payout immediately…there was a fifteen day wait since they had to collect from all forty-four states that play the game. That wasn’t a problem for me. I would have to pay federal income tax and state and local New York taxes on each yearly payout. Saul gave them the account information for what Sam and Cede called a bucket account. The big money would go into that. Then taxes would be paid and investments would be made. The first check, I’d let Saul play with a quarter of what was left after taxes and everything. Then I was taking ten million and dumping it into the project.

As I flew the short flight to Jacksonville, I couldn’t stop thinking about things. I was pretty sure that the main reason that Ethan and Saul both wanted me to take the annuity was to make sure that I didn’t spend everything immediately on the venture. I had no desire to do that. I just wasn’t going to let it fail before we could even see what we could do. I saw Melissa and others like her that we could employ. I saw girls and guys like Blair and I had been when we got kicked out of the system with no way to make something of ourselves that we could employ. But even more than just giving them jobs, we’d also give them a chance. In the more dorm like of the dorms, Blair and I had talked Slickback into putting in a library. Since we knew that we’d have to hire dancers who were too young to be Featured Entertainers, young’uns who had aged out of foster care with barely the clothes on their backs, we’d give the dancers the chance to use computers to get their GEDs or do online classes. That way they didn’t have to become Featured Entertainers. They could do anything with their lives once they had their paper. Blair and I were going to help them do it. Slickback wouldn’t care, he would always be able to find Featured Entertainers…he was good at that shit.

The thing all those anti-prostitution people would never acknowledge or realize was that prostitution had been in existence for as long as bartering. There was never any need to do more than put out the word that you were hiring…we wouldn’t need to put adds on Craigslist or in the papers. Chicks and dudes both would find us. If we built it, they would come. We just needed to get the building finished, and get every position staffed. Now, we had the means to do that. I was determined that we would do it right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thoughts and prayers go out to those injured and the families of those killed in the attacks in Barcelona.   
> My thoughts and prayers go out to those injured in the KKK, Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist attacks in Charlottesville, VA and most especially to the family of Heather Heyer.  
> I would ask that our Congressional Leaders would get rid of the Head Racist In Charge who proved himself to be even more morally bankrupt than even I'd originally thought.   
> Hey 45...anyone who joins the KKK, Neo-Nazis or any of the other White Supremacist organizations who were represented in Charlottesville was officially NOT A GOOD PERSON!!!  
> BTW the Confederacy lost, Lee, Jackson...those Confederate Heroes...they were traitors to the United States of America. They should be reviled not revered. 
> 
> Please give me some happy People. Comment, alot.   
> There have been some hellacious times in these last couple of weeks. Between traveling for work and the Solidarity March I attended, I'm just now getting to post. I'd apologize, but it was necessary.   
> I hope that each of you have done something to benefit our world. If not, leave a positive review on everything you read to day. I believe that we FanFic authors will all agree that that benefits our worlds. (LOL)  
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	8. Cool for the Summer (Demi Lovato), Hall of Fame (The Script feat. will.i.am) & Human (Rag’n’Bone Man)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How goes the summer and the tour for Cassidy, Adam & Justin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update  
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkenss87 you are a Beta Goddess

Chapter 8

Cool for the Summer (Demi Lovato)  
Cassidy (PoV)

Man, the summer was flying by. I was loving everything about it. I’d seen my grandparents, Nisha, Nara and Max in Atlanta, gotten to take Nara and Max to Six Flags…which we all loved. I’d helped Xena with her big projects, which I’d originally kind of felt bad about. But then my thoughts turned back to my biological mother. What if, in being able to escape Rocky, she had to turn to prostitution to keep body and mind together? If she did, I’d want her working for people like Xena and her family. The plans they had in place were pretty boss. So, I helped Zee…and found that I kind of liked it. She had to stay behind in Charleston to do something with the attorney and financial advisor for something, probably to do with her venture, but she met us in Jacksonville in time to join us all for the preshow practice. She was lucky enough to miss the ‘morning’ run though. Of that, I was kind of jealous. No seriously, we left Charleston at five in the morning. We got to Jacksonville before nine. We were staying overnight in Jax…which made sense, it was a less expensive city, hotel wise, than Charleston. So, we checked into the Hyatt Regency on East Coastline Drive. I was sharing with Erika, as usual…though recently she and Damien had been seeing each other more and more so who knew how much longer I was going to have my usual roomie. Once upon a time, I could room with Adam no problem, but he and Kelli seemed to hook up most nights so I’d have ended up sharing with Joaquina rather than Adam. Which didn’t seem like it would be a bad thing. She was nice enough and she was kin to Blaine who was a pretty good egg…even if he was a silver spooner.

Anyway, so we got there…got checked into out rooms and Sam sent out this mass text. ‘RIVER RUN at twelve thirty…before it gets too hot.’ Seriously, it was noon on a June Day in Jacksonville Florida… it was hot as hell ten minutes after the sun came up. But we all showed up…except the Roadies, those lucky bastards were doing their preliminary walk through of the venue. So, we ran along the St. Johns River from the hotel to a little tributary called Deer Creek and back. In ninety-one degree, seventy-two percent humidity weather. By the time we made it back to our hotel we were all panting and almost crawling to get back to our rooms. I was pretty sure that if it hadn’t been overcast, there would have been a revolt…led by Mercedes. For serious…it was bad. You’d have thought we would be used to it. Sam loved working out outside. On the other hand, if it had been a Cede day to decide what we did, we’d have stayed in the hotel fitness center or done laps in the pool. We’d taken a vote on the first tour that disallowed Puck from picking our group workouts…he thought ‘badass cross-fit’ gyms were the best idea ever. ‘Death traps we paid money to use’ was way more appropriate a title for those nightmare houses.

Still, we had a routine that we lived by on tour. Every day, show day or otherwise, we ate three square meals, with lots of vegetables. We worked out for at least an hour total. We took our supplements, vitamins to keep us healthy and herbals to keep our immune system healthy. Five weeks into our journey, the routines had been working well…knock on wood. So, when Sam called…we ran. Then again, we were often rewarded with little gifts from Mercedes when things were really horrible. A week after our Jax, Lord please take me now, River Run, we all got awesome new FitBit Charges. So, we really couldn’t complain.

In fact, I really couldn’t complain, like, at all. I was really grateful for having the tour where I was basically the mid card act. It boosted me up the ‘Celebrity DJ Ladder’ so quickly after the announcement that it about made my head spin. I’d been booked solid for months. I was going to have to crack and get someone to handle my appointments fairly soon. Hudson had been telling me that for a while, but I was stubborn. My own ability to handle my calendar was fucked by my southern woman’s inability to say no. One weekend that same cultural weakness had seen me do a Bat Mitzvah on Friday evening, an underground hip-hop club spin Friday night, two different wedding receptions and an after-hours club on Saturday and a surprise fiftieth wedding anniversary-slash-vow renewal party on Sunday. I slept until Wednesday after that.

But that one weekend was paying for my niece’s college in a couple of years, as long as she went to a state school. It would probably only cover a year or so elsewhere. But still, it would handle more than what she had set aside before that weekend, so, I couldn’t complain about that either. For the most part, I lived on what I made working with KAMA, my side gigs…I saved some, I reinvested some in my brand, and I put money away for Nara and Max to go to college. Frankie and Felix already had nice fat college trust funds. Uncle Nadir was not a low man on the chemical research totem pole. But Aunt Nisha, she made enough to make sure that Nara and Max had, but she’d never had much for extras. But with my lucrative career and even more lucrative side hustle, I did. So, much like she and Aunt Kat and Uncle Nadir had done for me when I was little, I made sure that Nara and Max got some extras. I also ensured that Grandma and Granddaddy had some nice extras too. Every other week, I did an Amazon order for all the stuff they used that wasn’t food. I couldn’t just give them a boat load of money…or it would mess them up for taxes. But Saul and Gwen both said it was safe for me to buy them their necessities and free up some of their pension money. Besides, they would never have accepted anything more anyway. So, I didn’t hurt their pride by forcing them to accept more than they were willing to allow me to do for them. They had been pretty wise with their money over the years, so they owned their own home and their cars were pretty new. I did believe them when they swore up and down that they were doing okay.

Even if they were doing okay, Aunt Nisha, Aunt Kat and I had decided that we were going to send them on a cruise to the Caribbean as a big Christmas gift that year. We’d planned it out Aunt Kat and I were getting the cruise itself and Aunt Nisha would buy them some new luggage, and the gifts from Uncle Nadir and all the grands would be gift cards so they could get some new vacation clothes. I was very excited about it. The second we made it officially official, I was booking all the rest of us on the same exact cruise. I’d done my research and Royal Caribbean had activities and services that would make everyone happy from Frankie and Felix on up to Granddaddy. I’d talked to a friend of a friend who happened to be a travel agent. Lacey had helped me to understand what we’d be able to do. Since Nara was over fourteen, we’d be able to put the kids all in one stateroom that could be connected to Nadir and Kat’s stateroom. Me and Aunt Nisha would have one stateroom to share and Grandma and Granddaddy would have another. Trish had even been nice enough to give me enough information about the cruise line’s ships to make a decision as to which one we should sail on.

I was pretty sure that Nadir knew what I was up to. He knew me well enough that when I’d asked him if Frankie and Felix had passports and wondered how I could find out about Nara and Max, it hadn’t taken much for him to figure out my plans. He’d made me promise that I’d let him help if it cost more than I could afford. But by the same turn, he’d immediately started working on making sure that Aunt Nisha, her kids and Grandma and Granddaddy had passports. He told me that Aunt Kat and the boys had theirs due to their trips to visit his Grandparents in Toronto. Hudson had made sure that we all had passports within our first six months as part of KAMA’s Crew. So, I with a little input from Uncle Nadir had decided that I should make the arrangements for over the kids Spring Break, which would hopefully line up like it almost always did, and happen after Columbia’s like it had since I joined the group. It was going to be a great family vacation. The kind Nisha and Kat have always wanted to do but couldn’t because Nisha refused to let Kat and Nadir pay for everything. Ha, she’d have no choice this time since she wouldn’t even know about it until it was already a done deal.

One person that I sure as hell wasn’t buying a ticket for was Rocky. In fact, Rocky Lee Carter was not even invited. Grandma and Granddaddy would just have to forgive me. Even if the week-long cruise cost less than Grandma’s pearls, I wasn’t spending that much money on a man who was constantly wishing that I did not and had never existed. Besides, the rest of us would have a much better time without him there to shit on our parade. Felix and Frankie were basically never allowed any freedom when he was around because Aunt Kat and Uncle Nadir didn’t want them learning any of his bad behaviors. Nara and Max didn’t talk to him, ever, but both of them had been known to throw things at him if they could get away with it. I never narcced them out; I rather enjoyed seeing his reaction. So yeah, it was just best for everyone that he did not believe even for a moment that we wanted, needed, expected or accepted his presence in any way at all.

I smiled to myself as I imagined how well that was going to go over at Christmas. Ah well…I had more in life to worry about than my biological’s slighted feelings. My career, untraditional as most people considered it to be, was going great. My family was doing good. All things considered, I was having one of the best years of my life. And my personal life was just fucked up enough that I wasn’t living in that weird psychological place where things were going so good that I started to dread what was going to happen to ruin it. Dave and I had ceased sleeping together not long after Valentine’s Day. It was completely amicable and he was still pretty much my best friend. We spent a hell of a lot of time together…just no more co-ed naked fun time. Dave had reached a place in his life where he was looking for a more serious relationship.

I totally got it. He was a couple of years older than me and he finally had time to try for a real, adult relationship. I didn’t blame him at all. In fact, when he found his person, I was totally down to spin at his wedding. As for me…I had issues. For real, serious, bone deep trust issues and abandonment issues. On top of those…I also had major time issues. There was no way that I’d have the time it took to build and nurture a real relationship. Hell, I didn’t even trust myself not to wind up picking a guy just like the guy who knocked up dear old Mom. One day, I’d find a therapist who could help me become confident in the one area of life where I was a total coward and then I’d try the whole love schtick…maybe. But until I was ready for that kind of adult-ish-ness…I had my friends, between Erika, Dave, Adam and Justin…I was never lonely. And between KAMA and my side gigs…I was never bored.

As my musings ended, Erika reached over and thumped me. “Chica, what’s going on under all that hair?” she teased. “Your face has been cycling through so many emotions, it was like you were spinning your brain.”

“Oh hush.” I shushed her. She loved to pick on what my ‘expressive face’. “I was just thinking about how things are going this year. I think Hudson might be right…It might be time for me to either get better scheduling software or an assistant of my own.”

“Thinking about that weekend you took so many jobs you damn near sprained your arm?”

I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t almost sprain my arm…it was just tired. But yeah.”

“We’ve all double booked ourselves at some point, but you were definitely an over achiever that weekend.” She smirked. “Have I mentioned that I am a little jealous that you don’t have to wear the silver halter jumpsuit I’m stuck in tomorrow?”

“Only five or six times. But don’t feel bad…I’m still jealous of those heeled Tim boots you keep getting to wear.” I shot back. We spent the next little while shooting the shit until we felt like sleeping. We talked mainly of our families. Since starting with KAMA, my road roomie had sent a full quarter of her pay back to her parents in Bayamon. With six kids still at home, and their first grandchild on the way, the money had been a blessing to the poor but happy family. Her Irish twin sister Sheila had married as soon as she’d graduated high school. Sheila’s husband worked with their father at the hotel where Senor Calderon worked and had since before he was eighteen. Things were changing again for her family soon. Erika’s third sibling, her brother Sebastian, had gotten into Hunter College on the Upper East Side. He was scheduled to move to Manhattan right around the time we got back from the main bulk of the tour. Erika was so proud of her Seb…he had scholarships and grants and would be living on campus, but Erika was really excited that he’d be close and that she was in a place where she could help him with extras and maybe even take him out for dinner when he didn’t have plans with whatever friends he made.

I was happy for her and to be honest…I was thinking about pulling a few extra double bookings on purpose. Nara was smart enough to get into one of the millions of schools in New York. I went to sleep that night wondering how to make that happen. I woke up, Jax show morning and immediately fell into my usual morning yoga. Completing the entire forty-five minutes of my morning salutations before Erika awoke. Her morning routine wasn’t all that different from mine, though it took place in a very different language. It took twenty to thirty minutes after she got out of bed before she was capable of saying a word of English. During that time, she usually hit the gym or she showered, dressed and everything. If she stayed in the room it was all accomplished while speaking to me as if I knew any of what she was saying.

We had breakfast together and checked our phones. Sam, Mercedes and Puck had decided that we were running a flipped set list. The band would start the night with the ‘Rescue Me Remix’ and end with the original song. Mercedes decided that everyone would be in Southeast Alternate Three…which was a very casual, very cool mostly linen and lighter color apparel set for everyone but the main three. Then the call went out for us all to get on our swim suits and meet them at the pool. I swear it took no time at all for me to throw off the shorts and tee shirt I’d put on after my shower and pull on the navy blue, halter wrap bikini top and matching bottoms I’d brought with me for just such an occasion. Erika threw on a strappy back aqua colored set that was similarly designed enough that everyone would understand that they were both from the same designer. L Space Swimwear by Monica Wise was an awesome line and they made our modest curves look hot as hell. Flowy maxi coverups and flip flops were donned. We grabbed our room keys, sunscreen and some cash for the vending machines near the elevators and headed up to the heated, roof top pool.

I noticed that it was just KAMA, Hudson and the Crew up there. But then I realized that, though early, it was still late enough that the road crew had gone over to the venue to get things ready for the sound check. I was woman enough to admit that I checked the other women out to see how I stacked up. I was a little surprised to see Santana in a pale ivory colored bikini rather than her usual, almost trademark, red color palette…but the color looked amazing against her butter pecan skin. Artie was already in the water with Brittany, who was rocking a TINY…like miniscule…pink floral bikini. Xee had her long, tall form stretched out in a lounger as far from the pool as possible. Her hair pulled up into a top knot that had to be killing her neck. Her bikini was pink and gray camo. It suited her well. Marceau’s suit was a two piece as well. In fact, looking around it soon became apparent to me that the only ones not wearing traditional bikinis were Mercedes and Hudson.

Mercedes was showing off her thick, lush curves…I really needed to work on my hetero-crush on my boss. It wasn’t healthy. Anyway, Ms. Boss Lady was wearing a burgundy-purplish, Grecian drape top V-neck swimsuit that proved to be a tankini when Puck slipped his hand up the top. Hud’s maillot was a simple, old fashioned, navy blue suit with a ruffled skirt. She was so tiny, I wasn’t positive that she hadn’t had to get that one from the kids’ section. She was so adorable. She was also scarily efficient. Like, I was positive that if she’d been raised in the Red Room…she would totally be Natasha Romanova. She was just that competent. Marceau, Bae-Bae and Joaquina waved us over to where they were playing in the water. We were cool with Bae-Bae and Marceau and Joaquina were cool. Even if Marceau liked me so much because I let her pick my brain about my home town for at least a little while every day. Hell, I was kind of proud that I could say that I even knew someone who’d gotten into Emory Med school…that was no easy feat.

KAMA took over the pool before ten in the morning. We headed down around one, showered…washed our hair and made it to the coliseum in time for a quick warm up and sound check. Since my hair was freshly washed, it was curly as hell, and Dee just told the local stylists that had been brought in, the staff of Bamboo Salon to go with it. Come to find out that the stylists specialized in natural, Black hair, so they knew exactly how to handle most of our hair and were at least conversant with the rest. In fact, they turned out to be really epic with the rest. By the time the six women and two guys finished with the thirteen of us, even Rainbow and Kelli…both of whom had stick straight hair, were rocking curls and looking fabulous.

Everyone was wearing linen for the first look of that show. Santana, Tina and Xena were in deep pewter linen wrap dresses with silver wedges on their feet. Rainbow, Britts, Bae, Jaja, Sugar, Marceau, Kelli and Joaquina were in baby blue, high low, linen tunics and bright white leggings…their feet ‘bare’ for the first third of the night. Erika…she had gone even more daring. Ridiculously high heeled, black strappy boots covered her to her knees, then it was just bare legs up to her short…seriously short black shorts and tied up, icy-silvery- blue men’s linen dress shirt whose sleeves had been truncated to the point that they were barely even straps. Had to give her credit she looked wild and cool and kind of wicked. Mercedes was in a linen dress that had a print with all the colors of the singers, dancers and Erika’s tops. The dress was an empire waist number that seriously…Why didn’t God see fit to give me boobs like that. Even half of that would have been nice…anyway, huge boobs aside, the rest of the dress flowed over her figure. Highlighting and then moving to shelter. It was a gorgeous dress made even more so by the carefully, hand sewn crystals that swirled through the pattern of the blues and silvers. When she moved just right, you could see that she was wearing icy blue capri-leggings. She’d paired her clothing with silver wedge booties with crystal embellishments.

Victoria and I were both wearing anything but blue or silver. Victoria wasn’t actually wearing a whole lot, shiny black booties, a black and yellow crop top, and skort number. But I was rocking a carmine red linen dress that was strapless and fitted to my hips then the skirt was slit and swirled around me, under it I was wearing a pair of ivory shorty shorts and a matching half vest over my shoulders. It was a great show that night. I had created two fabulous new mixes over the break and I rolled them out in Jacksonville. I’d caught Tana and Brittany in a compromising position before we’d left NYC and, with their permission got their happy-joy-joy sounds recorded and I used that as the undercurrent for my second set. It worked better than I’d ever dreamed. The place was lit. I was floating on air when the night wrapped. It wasn’t a party city, which was great, because we were up and out the next morning by nine and we got to our rooms in Miami’s Intercontinental Hotel by four. We were actually able to run from our hotel to the amphitheater for our daily exercise and the band and crew had a great practice. Then we all ran back to the hotel, got cleaned up and took over the La Camaronera Fish Market for dinner. It was an early night…mainly because we were all full as hell. Yet again, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives had proven correct about how good a restaurant was. People could blast on Guy Fieri all they wanted…that show hadn’t failed us yet.

Miami was a serious shocker of a show. First of all, since it was such a major city we were in branded apparel again. I was pretty sure that my dress cost more than my monthly rent, but I looked fierce as hell so I wasn’t complaining. The audience seemed surprised to see us all so expensively dressed. But that really was the least surprising aspect of the evening’s entertainment. Apparently, Hudson and the band were in on the surprise, because when SHAGGY…Mr. Boombastic himself…strolled out on the stage to join KAMA for ‘Your Guardian Angel’ before letting them join him in ‘Angel’ and him, Puck and Sam totally crushing ‘It Wasn’t Me’. the crowd was completely wild for the rest of the night. I was pretty sure that most of the crowd had no voices at all left by the end of my first set. It was just that epic a night. One that didn’t end until seven in the morning after an after party at LIV that was off the chain. Brantley and Haja had flown down for that show and they would be with us for a week, making sure that everything was running smoothly and going exactly as it should.

The party ran so long that we got back to the hotel with just enough time to shower, pack our stuff and hit the buses hard for the nine-hour drive to Columbus, Georgia, our next stop. That was a seriously small town. But we had two shows there. A regular show at the nine thousand seat Civic Center…then an after concert set at the Fort Benning Officer’s Club. Both shows were fine. No miss steps for KAMA and no missed transitions or skips for me. The trouble came after the show. Even as much as I hated Rockey, I may have still had a small weakness for military men. And the men of the Ranger School at Benning were the best of the best. I had an amazing night with two of them and had to rent a car to meet the crew in Birmingham. It was one of the best nights I’d ever had in all my life…but I was so completely whipped that night. My arms were still on point, but I didn’t move near as much from the waist down. Granted, the smile on my face probably made up for the lack of dancing.

Sam, Puck and Cedes had kind of laid into me during sound check for not checking in to let them know that I was safe and heading out that morning. It was hilarious. Sam kept talking about how worried they were…then Cedes smirked at me. “They were worried. I just wanted details. I don’t know many other women who’ve been with two men at the same time. I wanted to compare notes.”

Thankfully, both Birmingham and Tuscaloosa concerts went well. Then we had the Fourth of July weekend off. Since, between the Atlanta and Charleston stops, I’d just seen all my family, and Erika invited me, I joined her in spending the weekend in Puerto Rico while our bosses retreated to their love nest and everyone else took some time to hit the gulf beaches. It was an epic weekend of sand and surf and fun. Her hometown had some amazingly beautiful parts to it. Her family was gracious and welcoming. Her whole neighborhood was really. I ate so much that when we flew back to meet the tour in Mississippi…I was looking forward to Sam’s crazy runs. But I’d gone from high-ish yellow to caramel brown…so to me, the weekend was very well worth it.

As I got ready to take the stage in Jackson, I ruminated on a million thoughts. I was truly happy. I was looking forward to lots of things both personally and professionally. My music was my life and it was going great. I wasn’t exactly sure how my life was going to go for the rest of it. But I had to say at twenty-two…beginning to really make my mark on the world…it was off to one hell of a start.

Hall of Fame (The Script feat. will.i.am)  
Adam PoV

A little more than halfway through twenty- fifteen, I had to say it was turning out to be one hell of a year. Of course, that statement could always be taken one of two ways. As with any year, it was meant both positively and negatively. On the plus side, Damien and I had done enough background vocal work on the side that we’d each made three-quarters of our yearly base KAMA salary in addition to said yearly base salary just from our side hustle. Another plus side was that Aaron and Ronnie were true to their word. They were each contributing a hundred bucks every month to the mortgage of mom’s house and putting money into Rodney’s account every time they got paid. Me and Dame were putting money into Rodney’s account and we had set up similar accounts for Jarrod, Jaden and Denzil and we each put in fifty bucks every week for each of them. We may have also been slipping an extra hundred into Mom’s account too, but if so we’d never tell.

Granted, Dame and me weren’t saints. We saved for our goal of having separate places in a much better building…but we were twenty something year olds in the big city. We were not completely responsible with our money…who the hell was. But with Dame Ruth and Monsieur Kurt in our corners, we didn’t end up looking like dumbass idiots with more money than fashion sense. With our gear and kicks right and our fades tight, thanks very much to Cleotha’s amazeballs cousin, Mel…we hit the clubs at least two or three nights a week, when we weren’t working. Now, it went without saying that we loved the nightlife. The women our age in New York were driven as hell. In most cases that meant they were looking for a hit it and quit it just as much as we were. They had their careers to focus on and were not trying to get waylaid by the husband, house, white picket fence and two point five kids for at least another ten years. To ensure that their vision for the future came true, they took their birth-control seriously. Not only were they on the pill or the shot or had an IUD, but most of them rolled with their own condoms just in case. Not that we didn’t always have our own, but it was nice to know that they were looking out too.

I didn’t consider myself a player, because I wasn’t running any game. I didn’t claim to be looking for a relationship. I never said that I wasn’t. Never tried to be more than exactly who I was; a guy with a disproportionately big ass dick looking for a good time. And Damien was just as honest. But he was down for whatever, whenever. There were times I’d see him dancing with a chick, then take her and her gay bestie or boyfriend and disappear. All three of them would reappear twenty or thirty minutes later looking liked a good time was had by all. Sometimes Dame and his new friends would disappear altogether and he’d pop back up the next morning looking like satisfaction personified. There were mornings when I was a little jealous. Every man had dreams of threesomes…I wanted one too. Granted, my preferred demographics for said threesome were somewhat different. I hoped that I could get two beautiful ladies, preferably two of two different races, maybe even completely different from mine too…that would be awesome…but yeah, I dreamed of being with two women, while Dame was living his dream.

Still, there was more to our lives than singing, sexing, and shopping. We made sure to make our family a priority too. No one could claim that we didn’t go out of our way to take care of the family back home in Paducah. The week after we got our big ass bonuses for the Valentine’s Concert, we took a trip home and set Momma, Jaden and Denzil up with new computers. Fifteen hundred bucks went really, really far at the computer store in Paducah. Okay, we may have added some to it…but we were able to get both twins their own refurbished Dell laptops to augment the refurbished desktop we’d gotten them before we left after Christmas. Mom’s tablet was upgraded too. We got her a tricked-out Surface Pro 3 to act as both a laptop and a tablet. But she’d already saved up and gotten herself a small desktop that was more comfortable for her to use for writing her papers.

It tripped me out that my mom was taking classes in computer science and business management. She wasn’t trying to be a head honcho either. Her big aspiration was to have an office job where she sat in front of a computer all day. She wasn’t even all that pressed as to what it was as long as she sat at a desk in a suit and had benefits. It may not have been a huge ambition. But given that she’d spent most of her life working minimum wage jobs either outside or on her feet all day or both…her dream wasn’t surprising. Personally, I didn’t actually care what her dream was…I wanted it to come true for her. All of my brothers felt the exact same way. Jaden and Denzil were only rising juniors, but Denzil wanted to go to college for agricultural management and Jaden felt that he absolutely needed to because he said that he needed to get a degree in hospitality and business management in addition to a culinary arts degree if he wanted to own his own restaurant and he didn’t see himself working for other people long term. I got it…he could be a son of a bitch to others if he wasn’t the HNIC. Jaden and Denzil were the most driven of all eight of Momma’s sons. They had the ambition and drive needed to do a hell of a lot more than the rest of us.

Then again, the twins were lucky, they’d sort of had a dad. Well, Jaden definitely did. He actually looked a lot like his father. Denzil was either made up entirely of recessive traits, or he had a different father. But Jaden’s father claimed him too. However, the twins were old dude’s dirty little secret, mainly because he was also to the married mayor of Paducah. So, he did all his paying for things under the table. He’d gotten Momma to put them in the Big Brothers club and he became their big brother so he could spend time with them. One of the best things he’d done for them was to funnel some money into two of those five-two-nine plans. So, if they got good enough grades to get in someplace, they would have an easier time getting their paper than any of the rest of us had even come close to having. Well other than me and Dame…neither of us were the higher education types.

Anyway, the twins had never been dumb. Then again, the family buzz was that the other guy mom had been sleeping with at the time was the guy who set up the law school that opened and closed in a span of like four years in Paducah when I was a kid. When we went to visit them, Jaden and Denzil had just gotten their report cards. I was proud of my brothers. Denzil had all As, like not a single one of his grades were below a ninety-five. Jaden had a high B or two, but he too had like ridiculously good grades. Dame and I were both so proud of them, that we forgot that we both hated going shopping with their tall asses. Yes, we took our six foot and six foot two inches tall baby brothers to the mall where we had to constantly hear how this was too short and that didn’t fit right. I kind of hated them for that. But we had a good time other than that. Somehow, we ended up spending an hour in Kitchen Collection allowing Jaden to pick out the best tools of his desired trade. That was boring as hell, so afterwards me and Damien forced Jaden and Denzil to wait while we looked through F.Y.E. and Spencer’s for an equal amount of time.

The weekend passed too quickly, but we made time to go back home a few other weekends when we weren’t working or practicing or whatever. We always had fun when we went. It gave Momma a chance to see with her own eyes that we were healthy and happy. It gave me and Dame a chance to make sure that she and the twins and Aaron, Ronnie, Rodney, and Jarrod were good. On our flight back to NYC after the last visit before our life became the Aesthetic Enjoyment Tour, Damien looked over at me and smirked, “You know as soon as we have our new places, we’ve gotta get all of them to the city for a visit.”

“Oh, I know. We’ve been there for a few years now but we didn’t have any place for them to sleep and no way could we or they afford New York hotels.” I reminded him. It hadn’t been that we didn’t want our family to visit…the logistics had just been impossible before.

When I thought about it, I realized that Damien and I were in the midst of having a truly banner year. We easily had the money to be able to afford to get places of our own. Even if we listened to Saul Mayzer’s advice and purchased condos instead of just finding a new place to rent. We just needed to wait until our lease was up in September. Okay, that wasn’t exactly the truth. We probably should have set thing up so that the closing was in September, if we were buying places…which Momma, Aaron and Ronnie had joined the battle and convinced us was the smart thing to do. But we wanted to see what kind of bonuses we got after the tour wrapped. We’d add that amount to the eighty-five or so grand that we’d each saved for our down payments and that would determine our budget.

It was a month or so before Columbia’s final exams, yeah, KAMA’s entire Crew, Team and Staff knew the Columbia academic calendar like we were paying to be there ourselves. So yeah, me and Damien sat down and figured out what we were looking for in our next homes. Damien had suggested that we avoid the areas of Manhattan that were rife with clubs and bars. “Think about it…yeah, it’s cool not to have to catch a cab to the club or whatever…but do we really want to have to deal with the club head’s throw up when we go out on Monday mornings? Imagine trying to sleep with all the club-banger noise, sirens, Ubers and cabs at all hours and all the crazy shit that goes with living in walking distance of the nightlife. Plus, you know that shit’s either gonna be hella-spensive or all rundown and shit.”

I couldn’t fault his logic on that one. So, we settled that issue. We both wanted to live in the same building, we didn’t care about being on the same floor. We could climb stairs or take the elevator when we wanted to see each other. That wasn’t an issue. “We should try to each get a two-bedroom place. The spare bedrooms can double as music rooms or offices or whatever, but mainly they’ll be there so we have enough room for everybody when they come for visits.”

“True,” Damien agreed. “I need a bigger fucking closet man. It ain’t even funny. My closet is packed so tight, I can’t even tell you what’s all in there. I ain’t seen my shell top retro Adidas in a minute. It’s so bad, I saw one of those super luxury closets on TV the other day, and not only did I drool, I ended up watching the whole show hoping to see that bitch again.”

“Was that why you were watching Real Housewives of Orange County the other day?” I teased. “I can’t even pretend like you ain’t telling the gospel truth. I don’t need that whole dressing room thing, but enough space for all my pants would be nice.”

“Don’t forget, Justin’s looking for a place, too?” he asked.

“Yeah, he was there when Saul flat out told us to wait until after the tour.”

“We should get with him and look in the same building for all three of us.” Dame suggested.

I smirked. “That will make my piano lessons easier.” I stopped and thought for a minute. “It’s five of us though…Simeon and Jackson are thinking about looking into upgrading their home situations too. Maybe we can get a group buyer’s discount or something.”

“I don’t think it works like that. But shit, we can try.” He said and threw out his hand for a bump. 

Then we spent the next few weeks prepping for the tour and seven or eight weeks thereafter on the actual tour before we got to see if Jax and Simmy were down for our plan. Justin, we weren’t giving a choice, he was twenty-one and while he made enough and had enough sense to get his own place, it was better for all involved and his parents’ and godmother’s nerves if he had some older guys he could rely on when needed nearby. Of course, we didn’t spend our time on the tour just waiting to get a chance to see what Jax and Simmy thought about our plan. Because the tour itself was awesome. We had great shows most nights. We all managed to stay healthy. We cemented and created relationships with our summer time compatriots.

I personally became hella-close to Tina and her boy Mike and Kelli. Tina filled a little sister spot in my brothers only world. I’d never realized how much I’d have loved having a little sister until Tina wormed her way into my heart by never being bothered by my jokes and tossing them back at me as good as I could dish them out. In fact, something about her eyes reminded me of Jarrod’s, made me wonder if he had some Korean in his background. We couldn’t know. Momma never could figure out who his daddy was. Only he and the twins carried the Peterson last name. Most of the rest of us at least had biologicals on our birth certificates and court documents. Though the twins had a daddy everywhere but on paper. Still, I freaking loved Tina. Having her for a running partner was great. She wasn’t a lot taller than me or a lot faster than me…so we were prefect running mates. Plus too, it let her long legged fiancé be able to get his run on without having to hold back or worry about Tee. But the best part was that Sam and Puck didn’t yell at us for slacking because Tina was their girl, and Cedes got mad at them if they made her cry…which I was almost sure she could do on purpose. It was great.

Kelli was definitely not a sister to me. I was from Kentucky not Mississippi. No, she was entirely different. She was, well, I guess she was my girl or something like that. I’d never had a long-term boo-thang before her. To be honest, I assumed that fucking the same chick more than a time or three got really boring, really quick. But she introduced herself to me at the first practice after their paperwork was all signed and they were officially official. Then Kelli proceeded to work her cute little ass off to show me how much she wanted into my bed. And I let her, but I didn’t make it easy on her. See, I tended to avoid white chicks who only dated Black men. Seemed like to me, they usually did it at least partially to piss off Daddy Dearest and I had enough daddy issues of my own. But ultimately, Kelli succeeded. She won a ticket to ride. Mainly because it was nice to have a woman put in that kind of work to be with me. Don’t get it twisted, I did not suffer from a lack of female company. But I was not used to being a first choice…especially not when in the same dating pool as any of my brothers. It was nice to be wanted and Kelli was most of the things I looked for in a woman, short, cute, flexible and commitment-phobic.

Seriously, we didn’t date like Tee and Mike, but we did hang out and sit next to each other at meals. Hudson hadn’t put most of the summer people with the old guard. Instead they had put them together. Kelli’s assigned hotel roomie was Joaquina. Joaquina was good people. when me and Kelli started hooking up, she told Kells that she was cool with her trading keys with Damien so that everyone could get some sleep. It was pretty nice of her. Dame had asked her if she was sure and Quina had said yes. “You give good conversation. You and Erika are doing whatever it is that you’re doing, so you won’t be using this to try to get into my pants. We have the same political leanings and don’t like the same snacks. That all I really look for in a roommate.”

“Why is the snack thing important?” Damien asked confused.

Quina laughed. “Because that way, you won’t eat my ice cream and I won’t eat your old people cookies.”

“Huh, yeah…good looking out.” Dame agreed. We’d had many…many fights over both Nilla Wafers and Ladyfingers. Some of them had even gotten pretty damn physical.

So, my bro and Quina became roomies and me and Kelli got to get our fuck on, on the regular. I was shocked, as we approached the Fourth of July weekend, to realize that we’d been banging for a while and that shit wasn’t boring me. I mean, there wasn’t anything Kelli wasn’t down for. She was amazing at giving head, like no gag reflex good. She loved anal, asking for me to fuck her ass at least two or three times a week. Plus, she would do things like surprise me in my bunk and suck my dick until I fed her addiction. Yeah, I was pretty sure she was addicted to cum. It was awesome…but sometimes I felt like I was the latest in a long line…which both freaked me out and made me buy condoms like I owned stock. Which I may well have, I let Saul do his do with my investment portfolio. He knew what he was doing, I didn’t. I did pay Kelli back when we were backstage in Birmingham. That one had an extra air of danger to it…I mean, me, a Black guy dicking down a White chick in a semi-public place in Alabama. Even in twenty-fifteen it was kind of stupid dangerous…but that just made it hotter.

The holiday weekend was pretty awesome. We were in a fresh hotel room in Jackson…me and Kelli didn’t come up for air until it was time to get ready for the show. We had a blast all through Louisiana and Texas. Though after the Fort Worth concert, Kelli hadn’t felt like having sex. Something about the whole incident had totally triggered some serious emotions in her, so I just held her while she cried it out. I think that those hours holding her and comforting her were probably the longest I’d gone without cracking a single joke since I’d learned to talk. The next day, she’d wanted to skip out on the trip to Six Flags over Texas, but I managed to cajole her into giving it a chance. We went on every thrill ride the park had to offer…we even did The Riddler’s Revenge twice and Titan three times. Then we spent the entire afternoon chilling in the pools in Hurricane Harbor. It was a great day. But to be honest…the feels coming off both of us as we made love that night…they scared the hell out of me.

I was not liking the thought of catching feelings. I would never want to hurt Kelli like the men in my family tended to hurt even the women they loved. It was going to take some serious thought on what to do about it, but until the end of the tour, I was just going to enjoy the ride.

Human (Rag’n’Bone Man)  
Justin PoV

I was a full year, plus a few months, into my first real job and I was so happy I had trouble believing that it wasn’t all going to come crashing down on myself. I had spent my first year honing my craft and learning so many instruments that I was going to be invaluable to KAMA for the foreseeable future. In the year since I’d joined the group’s band, I’d gained proficiency in clarinet, harmonica, violin, flute, piccolo, and organ, and started learning a few other instruments including the xylophone. Additionally, I’d also spent it building a very positive credit history and saving my money like my name was Scrooge McDuck. I had taken out two major credit cards and a card for Macy’s. Before that time, I’d never had more than my debit card, it was a weird thing. But I kept to the plan. I never put much on them, never more than a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars on each and they were paid off every month. Saul Mayzer had explained the best ways to pump up our scores during one of the fiscal awareness sessions he’d held for all of us KAMA people not long after we’d gotten our first bonuses.

To be honest, there were a lot of great perks that came with being a part of KAMA’s Crew. They made sure we were well taken care of on the road. They weren’t mean and never belittled us or our contributions. Hell, they acknowledged our contributions in the liner notes and when it came time to dole out royalties. But my favorite of all the perks was access to Saul Mayzer. He helped us all with financial planning and management at a really reduced rate. Through him, I rolled half of each of my bonuses into the CDs, other high interest bonds and investments that he recommended. I saved the rest in an Ally Bank savings account. Of my weekly pay checks, I gave Julia, my godmother and landlady, five hundred bucks a month in rent. I was also responsible for two of her utility bills. It was the least I could do. She had never asked me for a dime, not even once I dropped out of Juilliard. I also took over feeding myself…that was probably the biggest relief for her. It was more than likely the biggest bill I’d caused her.

Other than those few expenses, I gave myself a five hundred buck a month fun allowance. The rest was saved religiously. I even saved the fifty dollars that my paternal grandmother slipped into the boxes with the birthday and Christmas gifts she and my grandfather sent me that year. Even so, I was shocked when I realized how much I’d saved up. My saving’s account had a nice, plump ninety-three thousand dollars in it when I checked right before we left New York to begin the national part of our North American tour. I also had several CDs that I could cash in to make up the rest of what would be needed to have a twenty percent down payment. Saul had created a CD ladder and rolled them up as necessary. But then again when Dame, Damn and I had talked to him about getting his wife to help the three of us start looking for places to buy…he’d told both of the Dam Bros and myself, “I advise you to wait until after the tour to do so. I believe that you’ll find it very beneficial to hold off for the moment.”

We didn’t know exactly what he meant, but knowing our bosses the way we all did…we could make an educated guess. So, we listened to the very smart man who knew something we didn’t know. Still, I could not wait to have a place of my own. I tried very hard not to date women too much older than me, and girls my own age very rarely had places of their own. The closest most of them came to actually living on their own was having a dorm room. Those usually came with roommates. Roommates usually came in two varieties…the watchers and the growlers. The watchers liked to watch what was going on between their roomies and their dates if they could get away with it. They were often the ones who pretended to be asleep when we got back to the room…but then I’d feel them staring at me while me and my friend were making out. I found that creepy. But I still liked them better than the growlers. Those were the roomies who got angry that their roommate had brought someone back to their room and made their feelings expressly known before they finally left us alone. I’d been cussed out by one too many growlers to ever like that type…like it was my fault their roommate brought me home. According to both Dame and Damn, the watchers were also more likely to be the ever-elusive joiner, but I wasn’t sure such a roommate really existed outside the porn industry.

However, those weren’t the main reason I was ready to move out. I loved Julia, I really did. She was and always would be one of my favorite grown-ups ever and one of the best ladies I’ve even known. But between me being her godson and her having literally changed my diapers when I was a baby and her having to save me from my burnt-out downward spiral, in her mind I was stuck somewhere between six and twelve on the ‘responsible adult-o-meter’. She gave me a curfew that I had to adhere to when I was not working. Yeah, it was two AM…but still a curfew. Besides, her laundry room was also in the basement and she’d caught me with a sexy little co-ed from CUNY one Saturday morning. Neither of us ever wanted that to happen again as long as we lived.

I was very much determined to enjoy the lifestyle my place with KAMA gave me without falling off the wagon. That was going to be very easy for me for several really good reasons. The first of which was that I’d replaced feeding my addictive personality disorder with alcohol and was feeding it copious amounts of music and time spent with beautiful young women instead. The second reason was that when I was partying with KAMA and the rest of the Crew, I could never seem to get an over twenty-one band…like ever. Which, yeah, I wasn’t there yet, but that had never been a problem even when I was a lot younger. The final reason was that Erika, Bae, Cass and JaJa…they had all taken me under their wings. So, while I was enjoying the press of lovely, curvy bodies against me as I danced through the night at whatever after party we happened to be attending that evening, none of the four of them would hesitate to grab my drink from my hand and take a sip to ensure that it contained no alcohol. I was never sure how I felt about that. On the one hand, I was glad that they loved me and cared about me enough to be on the lookout for any backsliding. On the other hand, it was like they didn’t trust me. But then again…I may not have been to a place for trust yet. Some of the tour crew ran their own AA meetings and they were nice enough to let me attend. Some of those guys had decades under their belt but their besties still had their back on the road.

Yeah, I couldn’t get mad at them for having my back. Besides, they had taught me how to dance for real. I’d taken a ball room dance class in middle school, so I’d never had a problem learning what Rainbow was having us do. But real club dancing, I’d learned that from Bae-Bae, JaJa, Erika and Cassidy. If not for them, and Dame and Damn teaching me to be a smooth mofo, I would have no way to get girls. That would have been a true and real tragedy. In my life, I’d had three relationships that lasted longer than two weeks. They’d all occurred since I found a place in the KAMA family. During the precious tour, the guys had all told me not to limit myself to a certain type before I tried the entire spectrum. So, I’d been the reading rainbow of dating. I still didn’t have a specific type…but I knew what I didn’t like better. I didn’t like very, very tall girls…nor did I like very short girls. Ladies between five-five and five-ten were just about perfect. I liked curvy ladies, but not very curvy. I was certainly a butt man…however breasts were awesome too. I liked girls who were passionate about something. It didn’t have to be music they were passionate about either.

One girl had been seriously into politics and we’d dated for the latter half of her spring semester. Roni could talk for hours about the flaws with the Electoral College system and how the advent of technology had rendered it obsolete. She knew not just why she voted the way she did…but made strong cases for why certain people voted against their own best interests and how foolish it was to abstain from voting. I’d learned a ton from her. We’d technically broken up at the end of the school year. She was spending the summer studying abroad in France and I was touring. We did have a date already set for September and she’d sent me some great food porn over the past several weeks. Toni was really sexy, too, not just amazingly smart. She was slightly above average height and a little curvier than Erika but a no where near as curvy as Mercedes. She had such amazingly soft, light-brown skin, lighter even than Cassidy’s and the prettiest hazel eyes. But what made her, just so beautiful to me was her freckles and curls. Plus she had an amazing ass and she let me play with it whenever I wanted. I was pretty sure that she and I were not each other’s Johnny and June…but I could listen to her wax poetic about the American representational democracy versus other democratic systems in the world for hours, especially if she was nakedly doing so again. Hey, I was a twenty year old guy who’d only really started paying attention to the whole sex thing about a year before…it was a presence in my psyche all the time.

But, I…fortunately or unfortunately depending on one’s perspective…wasn’t into random hookups beyond making out either. At least not anymore…one STI had been enough to make me straighten up and fly right for the rest of my days. Thank God that Trichomoniasis was easily cured with an antibiotic. Blow jobs were not safe sex. But I was never making that mistake again. So, I was getting little to no real satisfaction on the tour. I was, quite literally, taking things in hand myself in my bunk with the curtains closed, or in the showers of our hotel rooms. Dame and Damn were less careful…but not really. They just used condoms every single time. But if some random groupies wanted to suck them off or even fuck them, it was pretty rare of them to say no. That was kind of why they loved rooming together. At least, that was how it had been before Kelli Rogers and whatever was going on between Dame and Erika, anyway. I was with Joe Hart, and even though he wasn’t a judgy type person; he was just so inherently good that I wasn’t about to bring some chick back to our room. That would have felt like the ultimate in rudeness. So, I took care of myself.

Overall though, I had an awesome road roommate. He had an amazing voice and his guitar skills were among the top twenty guitarists I knew in real life. He played bass, drums and keyboard too. The jam sessions we had in our hotel rooms were pretty epic. It tripped me out sometimes how different he and his girlfriend Tessa could be. Joe was laid back and made a practice of loving everyone. I was pretty sure that he was the kind of guy who took bugs back outside rather than killing them. Tessa was so neurotic it wasn’t funny. She was the very opposite of a people person. She was good with her people, but others…not so much. When she just met you, if she found something of interest in you, then you were golden…if not, she didn’t bother to remember your name. But at the same time, they both had an undercurrent of unshakable loyalty and a core of strength to them that spoke of shared ideals and complimentary dreams. It was an interesting study in human interpersonal relationships.

There were a lot of those happening on the tour. Like the new girl Kelli…she’d caught Damn in her web with the quickness. The two of them were keeping things superficial to make things less dramatic on the tour. But Damn was considering suggesting that they make an agreement that if they were still feeling each other when the tour was over, they’d date for real. It seemed to be working out for them. We were seven weeks into the tour and Dame said they were ‘getting it in’ every night we stayed in a hotel.

I loved hotels. I did. We were always in really nice ones, too. Mercedes had laid out the places she was willing to stay and the fact that her full Crew stayed where she, Sam and Puck did, so we always had nice rooms. They were very firm in that ideal in all their contracts. Even so, sometimes the hotels exceeded expectations. Like where we stayed in Jackson, Mississippi…we were performing at the Mississippi Coliseum. It wasn’t our biggest stop nor was it our smallest. But the promotor was apparently so grateful to get us for their venue that they put KAMA, and therefore KAMA’s Crew, up at the Westin in Downtown Jackson. That was one of the most awesome of all the places we stayed during that tour. The hotel was brand new. So new, in fact, that I was pretty sure that I was the very first person to sleep in the king-sized bed in my solo room. Yup…the promoter was so happy to get such a big named act that he’d provided us each with our own rooms. And Hudson was so awesome that she’d provided him a list of those who were all coupled, or thrupled, up so he didn’t end up paying for rooms to just sit empty. Mr. Jenkins, the Mississippi promoter guy, also got off pretty cheap because a lot of the crew took off for the weekend of the Fourth and they didn’t need rooms because they didn’t get back until the day of the show.

I wasn’t among those. I’d seen my parents over the Father’s Day break, and just hadn’t felt like being bothered with making extra travel arrangements. Besides, I was working on a melody line that would just not leave me alone. Yet, even with playing with the music, I still had to sleep. I slept so good in that hotel room it was almost coma deep. I made sure to find out everything I could about the mattress, the bedding all of it. I would so be using that information when I got a place of my own. I slept so well that I woke up and went down to the fitness center without prodding from anyone. I felt better rested that I had since we left New York. The show that night went great. Maybe it was the great night’s sleep, maybe it was the two nights off, but whatever it was, we were all, totally, in the right headspace for that show. The stage apparel was even working in our favor. SouthEast Alternate Two was cool and comfortable even under the stage lights. That night our comfort and rest showed itself beautifully. The dancers seemed to move like they didn’t have bones. Dave’s arms were going so hard; I thought he was going to need to ice them like a pro-pitcher at the end of the night. I, myself, knew that I needed some serious massaging of my primary tools of trade. But I was so damn proud of the audience’s reaction that it was totally worth it. They were the liveliest crew of the whole south. There was an after party but it wasn’t as long as usual. We partied, showered threw on comfy clothes and were on the buses on our way to our next stop before we’d have usually managed to extricate ourselves from the local celebrities and richer fans at the after jam. It wasn’t a super long drive from Jackson to Ponchatoula, Louisiana where we spent three lovely nights in the Reunion Lake RV Resort. The RV Park was a lot cooler than the name implied. It had a big lake and awesome pool and Direct TV hookups for all our rigs. It was really nice. Best of all the bathrooms were so clean they practically squeaked. The slots we were assigned were off the beaten path and well away from the bulk of the other ‘campers’ so Sam, Mercedes and Puck didn’t have to worry about being bothered.

It was a little weird though. The Resort had quiet hours from eleven at night to eight in the morning so after the after parties wrapped up around six, we couldn’t go back to the buses until eight. However the promoter…it was the same guy for both New Orleans and Baton Rouge…had thought of that. He took us all out to breakfast after each of the shows. It was a damn good thing that Sam made us run around the resort every day, because the way we were eating I’d have gained twenty pounds over those two and a half- three days. Before the Lakefront Arena NOLA show, we had an early dinner at Brennan’s…I ate so much I was almost physically sick before the second set. Then the next night, we had our early dinner at Parrain's Seafood Restaurant before we made our way back to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center for our show. I’d learned my lesson the night before; sort of. I got a to-go box that I devoured as soon as we wrapped the encore. Breakfasts at the Ruby Slipper in New Orleans and the Kolache Kitchen in Baton Rouge definitely didn’t help my overeating problem either. On Thursday, our one show free day that week, we headed to our next stop.

It was as we were leaving Baton Rouge, heading to Houston, that my phone chimed with a Facebook alert. Given the cost of international calling or texting Toni and I were only really communicating through Facebook and Twitter, so I was all over that alert. What I saw made me feel sicker than the crab & mirliton remoulade, shrimp & grits, gulf fish amandine and blackened redfish…wow I really did stuff myself at Brennan’s. Toni had posted a picture of herself with a tall, lanky brunette guy somewhere in Denmark. She’d captioned it ‘Sampling the local fare!!!’. I couldn’t even wrench my eyes from the screen even as sick as the sight made me. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized that, even though, we’d said we were taking a break and we may or may not get back together in the fall, I’d not been acting like it. I’d been pretty much acting like I was still in a relationship. Don’t get me wrong, I’d danced with a hell of a lot of chicks at the after parties…but that was it. It flipped my world on it axis to realize that I had totally pulled a Rom-Com move.

That had to change. I wasn’t Jennifer Aniston or Jennifer Garner or Jennifer Lopez…wow, a lot of the actresses who did rom-coms were named Jennifer. Anyway, I wasn’t a girl and I wasn’t in a rom-com. So, after our very successful Houston show and at every after party thereafter, I made sure to find myself a new cutie to make out with. I didn’t personally post any pics but the girls did and they always tagged me in them. I did have to admit, that one decision made the after parties a hell of a lot more fun. I kind of made it a point to try new things too. I made out with a really pretty, Hispanic, transgender woman. She was really gorgeous, but she was also only using me to make her girlfriend jealous. I was kind of flattered that she thought I was sexy enough for that to work. At one point, I even made out with a guy. I mean, yeah, the dude was so hot any one, male or female, who wasn’t completely ace, demi or whatever would have made out with him…so I don’t even know if it was really fair of him to use me in his sick game of KAMA Crew Pokémon…meaning he had to catch us all. Blake, hot name too, was a devoted KAMA-eleon and he was following the tour throughout the entire south. He managed to add quite a few of us to his collection. By the time the tour reached Fort Worth, his Facebook feed told quite the tale. He’d kissed me, went even further with Dame and Erika…even further than that with Jax and, in Houston, he posted a morning after picture of him and Simmy. That was seriously funny. Not the Facebook Timeline, but Simeon’s walk of shame.

Simeon had tried to cover his tracks by making a Sprawl-Mart run and getting work-out clothes, some cheap running shoes and a small backpack. Then he’d pretended like he’d gotten up early and gone for a run. Of Course, that shit didn’t work. Everyone in the Crew knew Blake by now, and Darcy had even friended him. We all knew where Simmy had spent the night. It wasn’t like we even cared. So, we clowned him hard for his attempt at subterfuge. The very fact that he tried to cover that hookup up was way more hysterically funny than him having let Blake get him into bed. After all, the guy was hot enough that he convinced me to kiss him. Simmy just had to try and be all sly. So yeah, he got teased for days.

It was good that we had that laughter after Houston, because Fort Worth…that turned out to be one of our best shows and yet, one of our worst stops. Texas signified our regional transition from Southeast to Southwest. That meant saying good bye to Victoria Monet who was moving on to open for Cat Valentine’s tour. But it also meant saying another hello to Todrick Hall. I liked that guy’s voice and he was truly funny and the work he was creating for his play he was going to take on tour the following year was truly epic. The changeover also meant new set orders, new costumes, and in my case, a new keyboard. The Yamaha P-115 Ultra Platinum Keyboard that Sam, Cedes and Puck had gotten me eighteen months before when I’d first joined the Crew had to be sent off for repairs. Thankfully, there was a newer version of the same setup waiting in the wings so there was no lag time or need to panic. However, if that had been the worst thing to happen, it would have been fine. Unfortunately, nothing in life that is fully good and brings people of all genders, ethnicities and ages joy would be left unsullied for long. It just wasn’t the way things worked. Our tour was no exception. Twenty-six concerts, in twenty-five cities without a single fight, stage stormer…not even a shoplifter…then came Fort Worth.

I didn’t find out about what happened until after everything went down, of course, but it was all over the morning papers and on the national news the next morning. “RANGEMAN RESCUES CONCERT GOER AT FT. WORTH AREA KAMA CONCERT.” The article told the story, including the parts that we hadn’t learned the night before. During our second set, a young girl, only fifteen years old, had been pulled into an off limits, darkened area of the convention center she had to pass on the way to the bathrooms. The man was twice her age and almost three times her size. She tried to fight him off, but he was a huge motherfucker. She suffered a broken cheekbone and a hairline fracture of her jaw for her defiance. Around that same time Bones was making his security rounds. With Mercedes’ Stalker still on the loose, every venue was still monitored carefully at all times. When Bones entered the area, he found the girl’s clothes had been shredded and some of them used to bind and gag her. She was barely conscious and weeping…still trying to get away. He immediately radioed for help and stopped the assault with authority. The young girl was injured, but no worse than that. Bones had been in time; her assailant had had no chance to do more than terrorize and grope her and get his pants open. Which was bad enough.

The men at Rangeman were all men of honor…protectors. That was probably why Bones didn’t stop beating that son of a bitch until the others got there. The prick had tried to fight back, but…like most cowards…against a man his own size, he’d lost and lost badly. Bones had broken the guy’s entire face, both of his hands, more than a few of his ribs, his collarbones and his shoulder. Then he’d cuffed the bastard and left him face down on the floor while he stripped off his own shirt and covered the girl to preserve her modesty and dignity. He carried her to the ambulance that had been called in when he alerted his fellow Rangemen to the crime he’d stumbled upon. A local news crew had been in the parking lot covering the concert and the protesters that had come out to express their anger at the relationship KAMA shared. There had been minor protests at most of the southern shows…but the two Texas shows had definitely had the biggest and angriest. They had their own special brand of crazy. They didn’t just get pissed about the polyamory…no the bible thumpers in Texas were egged on by the racists who were pissed off that Sam, Cedes and Puck were together when Cedes was black and the guys weren’t. Fort Worth’s crowd was twice as large and chocked full of racist nuts.

Anyway, the people from CBS-DFW filmed Bones carrying the young girl to the ambulance and saying something into his phone. He was actually relaying the girl’s name and seat information to the others so they could go and get her mother. Her mom had bought her the tickets and brought her to the concert to celebrate her fifteenth birthday the night before. Some of that made the news that night…as did Woody and Ramon escorting the handcuffed and beaten asshole to and ambulance of his own. Puck, Sam, Cedes and the Crew all learned of the assault after the encore because the usual security measures had to be altered while Bones, Woody and Ramon went down to the Fort Worth PD to give their statements. One of the Rangeman drivers, Mr. Guzman, had to come in and take point with Binkie in KAMA’s dressing room during the meet and greets. It wasn’t a bad use of him, the dude was big…like he was big even for a Rangeman. He and Junior should not have been able to fit on the same bus. He also had a mean mug that looked like he ate baby chickens for breakfast. The VIPs were so well behaved that night there was talk of making his presence in the meet and greets a more permanent thing.

With the knowledge of what had happened at their concert, it wasn’t a surprise to anyone who knew them that KAMA popped in to visit the poor girl in the hospital and took care of her family’s deductible. They had insurance so KAMA didn’t have to pay the full bill. They took pictures with her and her parents. They left her with all of the things that the Swag Shak carried and more than a few things they didn’t all autographed and some of it even framed. Mercedes sang Demi Lovato’s ‘Warrior’ to her and reminded her that she’d been so strong. It was really kind of them to take that time. We had all taken the time to get her something for her room, teddy bears, mylar balloons and flowers, but we didn’t want to inundate the poor thing with all of thirty of us. Then we left the hospital, and made our way to Oklahoma City. That was an interesting stop. We had dinner out at a restaurant Xena recommended with her father figure and sister Blair in attendance. Blair had an interesting face and a body that wouldn’t quit. I thought she was adorable. She literally patted me on my head when I told her so though, so there was no making out with the quirky hottie.

She, Xee and Slickback had several meetings so Xena met up with us in Tulsa. Tulsa was a blast. Sam, Cedes and Puck’s goddaughter’s birthday was that same day so Azimio’s whole family along with the entire Jones, Evans and Puckerman clan came to visit. They threw the little girl a party at the zoo and we were all invited. Since only Erika and Cassidy had much little girl toy buying experience, the rest of us all just gave her small gifts and money for her college fund…but we managed to have a wonderful time and we all got to play with cute kids so it was a pretty great day. The show went well and KAMA dedicated Stevie Wonder’s ‘Happy Birthday’ song to her at the top of the show. Robyn got to come out and see the show as did Beth, Sam’s little brother and Mercedes’ baby sisters were all there at the beginning of the night, but of course, they went back to their RV and hotel early. After Tulsa, we had our next show in Little Rock. That concert happened to take place on my twenty-first birthday. Somehow the bosses decided that since it was my birthday, they would feature me in the show. That was kind of awesome. I got to play several instruments and was able to be front and center on the songs that had piano or sax solos. It was pretty cool. But my best present came at the end of the night, my parents and Julia came back stage with the VIPs. Puck, Sam and Cedes had flown them all in for the night and I was excused from the after party to spend time with them.

I loved what I did. I loved who I was and I was never going back to where I’d almost let life take me. My future was brighter than I’d ever really believe possible when I’d dropped out of Juilliard. I knew in my heart that my happiness was not fleeting. There was so much living for me to enjoy and I knew that I could make a real mark on the world, all through my very first love…music.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wishes for Love Peace & Soul to the entire world.   
> The thought of the day is schizophrenia should totally trigger the Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. (Grow a spine & take our nation back from the nutjob in chief, Congress. Pence is no prize hog, but at least he doesn't think Nuclear War is a good thing.)  
> To any readers in the ATL metro area, Illy's Hubby is at Onyx-Con this weekend with some of his art. You can check him out at rlpattersonart.com and maybe head over to 3100 Enon Rd, Atlanta, GA 30349
> 
> Drop me a comment   
> Tell me if you think a 'group buying discount' should be a real thing.   
> Write me a dissertation on the whiplash you've gotten trying to keep up with all the personalities in DJT's head this week.   
> Scoot over to Wolf Creek and say hello to Illy's Hubby (If you can)  
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	9. I Wanna Make You Close Your Eyes (Dierks Bentley)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part one of a look at a portion of the summer through our three protagonists eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> THANKS to my awesome Beta, DaughterofDarkness87.

Chapter 9

I Wanna Make You Close Your Eyes (Dierks Bentley)  
Sam PoV

Touring was hard work. I personally never minded hard work. My grandfather had always said that it was good for the body and good for the soul. However, MeMaw had always added that getting some rest when possible was a necessity or I’d burn out and that wasn’t any good for anybody. The break at Father’s Day was awesome. We’d gotten to spend some time at our house and sleep in our own bed. But that break was work in and of itself…just in a different way. We had our little siblings and older daughter with us for the bulk of the time we were in Lima. That was so epic. I loved Sloane and I never really got to see him. So, playing with him and helping him say the parts of the body that we pointed at was fun. Helping him say anything really. He wasn’t the most talkative kid. He was smart, but just didn’t talk…at least that was how it started. When he realized that me, Noah and Cedes wouldn’t give him what he wanted until he at least said a version of the word, he was little we didn’t expect perfection…but we did demand more than just pointing and grunting. Once he figured that out, he started being more willing to use his words…those that he knew, which was actually more than I expected. The kid was really, really smart. I was pretty sure that the adults were so focused on Mara and Maea’s more immediate issues than they had been on Sloane’s refusal to talk when he still had time before anyone considered it a problem. That wasn’t a bad thing, but I’d been pretty sure that we could fix it…so we did. Besides, there were times when we really hadn’t been able to figure out what he’d wanted. Words were a necessity.

We managed to fix Maea and Mara too. The simple truth was that they were Jones/Harris women which meant that they had a predisposition to having some pretty serious control problems. Now usually that wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but they were also stuck in a weird limbo place where they were often treated like the eldest when it was just the two of them and Sloane…but they were also the babies of the Jones kids and kind of Kiddles in the Middles when considered in relation to the entire, extended Jeverman family, especially those still at home. Still, all they needed was a little talking to. Mara was pretty easy. Noah just told her how much better it was to get attention for being good than to get it for being bad. He’d explained to her that the point of having a boat load of older siblings was that she could learn from our mistakes rather than making them herself. “That’s not to say you won’t make mistakes…but they’ll be your own and not something we’ve all done a million times before.”

“But, Amy Mackleson said that I was the evil twin.” Mara said quietly.

Puck scoffed. “First of all, there are no such things as evil twins, so Amy Mackleson is an idiot. Second of all, even if that was a real thing, who is Amy Mackleson, idiot that she apparently is, to tell you Amara Grace Jones who you are? You decide for yourself if you want to be good or bad…In fact, nobody is all good or all bad, so you do you. You listen at school, because you’re too smart not to. You make the choices that are best for you. If anybody doesn’t like it…you tell them to see Sarah and she’ll beat their asses then, make them an appointment to see me.” 

She threw her arms around him and hugged him tight. He hugged her back just as fiercely. “I love you Noah.”

“I love you too, Mara. You know, I wasn’t much older than you when I let other people convince me that I was pretty much worthless. It took your big sister and Sammy-Boy to really convince me otherwise. I don’t want you to ever feel like that. Okay?”

“Okay.” Mara said and gave him another hug. From then on. Mara was golden. She was not a perfect child, none were, but it was like Puck had given her the permission to be true to herself. So, she was.

Now Maea, she was a tougher cookie to crack. We tried everything…we tried taking her to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. We tried celebrating when she did make it to the potty, but by Monday we were completely out of clean clothes for her and the ones we did have were in the wash. By the time the Elder Sibs had to leave to get back to Atlanta in time for them to make it to work on Monday morning, we were all frustrated and kind of at the end of our tethers. Maea had another accident after things were just down to the twenty-one and under crew…and Puck. Suddenly Mercy grabbed the keys to her car and disappeared. She came back like half an hour later with a Sprawl-Mart bag of some of the UGLIEST kid clothes I’d ever seen…and I’d seen Will Smith’s “Parent’s Just Don’t Understand” Video, so I knew ugly kid clothes. The shirt was both plaid and paisley…how was that even a thing? The pants were a shade of brown tinged with green that seemed to have been designed to be the same color as the worst possible accident a kid could have. “Alright, Maea…you’ve gone through all your cute clothes. So now, you’ve gotta wear these.”

“But they ugly. Mommy says Maea and Mara pretty girls and pretty girls wear pretty clothes.” She argued.

“Yeah, and when you stop peeing and pooping in your clothes every other minute…you can have your pretty clothes back…but until then.” Mercy admonished and then forced Maea into the ugliest outfit the poor little darling had ever worn in her life. Amaea cried like her very soul was in pain. It should not have been as funny as it was. That was the last time Amaea Gale Jones ever had a potty accident in her life. The thought of dressing like that more than once definitely made her pay attention to the demands of her body forever after.

Still, as much as we had loved being with the family and having all our siblings under our roof for those four days, we made a conscious decision to take the Fourth of July weekend completely off and completely for ourselves. We hadn’t been back to our place in Chicago in months, so we knew that that would spend the down time there. As soon as we finished the meet and greets after our Tuscaloosa concert, we headed for the airport. The drive back to Birmingham was over and done in less than an hour. And since it was just the three of us and Binkie, we had no problems at the airport. Apparently, Ranger had worked a deal with the TSA that they allowed his men to board planes armed, and his men would provide support for the Air Marshalls and act as on flight security. It made everyone feel more secure when we were traveling.

The flight itself was only a couple of hours long and since it was closer to morning than night when we got in the traffic wasn’t all that bad. The apartment was a little stuffy when we got there. So, we dropped the AC down to sixty-eight before we showered off the flight and just fell asleep in each other’s arms. Of course, since we’d gone to sleep naked, when I woke up, our soothing, romantic bedroom was filled with the beautiful sounds of Mercedes’ pleasure. I looked over and her pretty little hands were overflowing with her big, gorgeous breasts. Her body was writhing with her legs splayed and hooked over Noah’s shoulders. I came up on my side, resting my head on my hand, I watched as he devoured her. He was like a starving man at an all you could eat buffet. Only after he’d made her come twice did he lift his sexy head. I watched in envy as he licked the dewy drops of Mercy’s passion from his lips. “Well, Babygirl, looks like you owe me an hour of pure obedience…You woke Sammy-boy up.”

The smile Mercy gave me was one of pure feminine satisfaction. I remembered once again that night of our very first thruple date. I’d thought in a moment of brilliant clarity that no matter who held the dominant reigns in the bedroom…Mercedes Antoinette Jones was the one in our relationship with all the power. I leaned over and gave her a long, slow, deep kiss. “Morning, Beautiful Mercy.” I whispered against her lips before I moved to kiss Noah in the same intense, passionate way. “Morning, Sexy Comfort.”

Mercedes chuckled breathlessly. “Sammy Boy, you’ve gotta stop looking up baby names. It’s still gonna be a couple of years before we can have a baby.”

I shrugged. “I know…I also know that we have to give them the name that’s best suited to them. I just want to be prepared.” I offered with a ‘you know you love me’ grin. Then I silenced any further commentary by leaning over and sucking one of her sensitive little nipples into my mouth. I licked and sucked as Noah got a condom on and he made love to our wife as I helped him lead her to and over the edge of bliss a time or three. His commands were all based on the determination that Mercedes would save her voice. No matter what he did to her, she couldn’t scream. Even when he took her from behind while I sucked her passion hardened clit, she could moan, she could grunt, she could make that sexy little gasping groan…but she wasn’t allowed to scream. She managed it…mostly. A couple of times, I kissed her just to swallow the scream I could see was about to wrench its way out of her.

Of course, I had to help her get her vengeance. So, she and I made Noah scream out in pleasure with the expedient method of her sucking him off while I fucked his ass. I knew that was one of his favorite ways to make love. Number three on the list. Number one being us both inside Mercedes and number two was him inside Mercy’s tight little pussy and me in his hot little ass. Once we had our breath back, he and Mercy banded together to wring my ass out. In my most honest moments, I could admit that I loved being the meat sandwiched by my loves as much as they both did. It never failed to leave me completely and fully satisfied. Only then did we shower and get presentable for the public. Thankfully Mercedes thought ahead and called Binkie.

We hit IHOP for breakfast and grabbed some light groceries then ensconced ourselves in our love nest for the rest of the weekend. Mercy rode me in our shower. I ate her pretty pussy on our balcony. Puck had me for breakfast as he and I fingered Mercy while we sat at the dining table. We fucked her beautiful body between us in the music room. My back got kind of angry at me for that one…but it was totally and completely worth it when she screamed out her special scream that let us know that we’d done our job to the best of our abilities. We even christened the guest bed room on sheer principality. Granted, we did wash all the bedding afterwards. It would have been gross otherwise.

One day, I would finally be able to decide which way Mercedes Jones looked sexier, on her back under me, splayed wide open and undulating under me, her breasts shaking and jiggling, or riding me…looking down at me as her tight, wet heat enveloped me…her breasts shaking and jiggling. Then there was the possibility that she looked best on her hands and knees, that magnificent ass of hers up in the air as I took her from behind, thrusting deep into her and pushing her forward to take Noah’s cock into her beautiful mouth. One day…maybe…in the very far future, I finally be able to make a choice. Until then, I was so good collecting data for the next fifty or sixty years.

It was no wonder that Binkie had to come and get us early in the morning on Monday, reminding us that we had planned to drive over to Lima and take Nikolette to her camp ourselves. We actually slept the whole way to our Lima house, which the parents had opened for Nikki, Michelle, Marcus and Jazmine and their parents and Manny and Zip. We made it, getting there just as they were loading into their rented Suburban. “Daddy! Papa! MeDe!” Lil Darlin yelled happily when she realized who we were.

We hopped out and gave her a huge hug. “Hey, Lil Darlin’ you didn’t think we were just gonna let you and Double M-J go adventuring without us at least seeing you off.” I joked when it was my turn to hug our pretty little girl. She looked so cute in her Blue Lantern tee shirt, jean shorts and Adidas shell top tennis shoes. All of them were wearing their Lantern shirts. Nik-Nak’s was blue for hope. Michelle was in orange…avarice was kit and kin with extreme ambition and that was Michelle’s defining trait as far as I could tell. Her brother’s shirt was the original Green. Marcus had more willpower than most people three times his age. Probably because he’d had to deal with Michelle from the moment they were humans. Jazmine was in the darker, purply blue that the Lantern Corp called indigo and said was the indication of a person of compassion. Jazmine was filled with compassion…for her people.

“Are you coming with us or are you just here to see us off.” Jazzy asked happily from where she’d run over to say hello too. It had taken her a little while to really warm up to us. She’d known Mabel her whole life and seeing her replaced had not made for a happy best friend. But through treating Nikki well, we’d become okay in Jazz’s book. Her parents had grown to like us for the way we’d handled everything with Mabel’s passing.

EA and her husband Trey were fun and they were very much happy to see us. “Oh good, with you guys there to distract everybody, we can cry in peace without the other parents seeing and thinking that we’re all wussy or something,” Trey Taylor laughed. He told dad jokes like it was his job. But, luckily for everyone, it wasn’t. Richard Michael Taylor the Third, known to everyone as Trey, was one of Mayor de Blasio’s Deputy Mayors. It left him less time with his family than he would have liked, buthe was doing good work.

No one was surprised nor could they really fault Nikki for choosing to make the just under three-hour trip with us. It had been a couple of weeks since we’d sent her back to New York with Bubbie while we returned to our tour. We’d missed her more than it seemed possible considering that we’d not even known of her existence at the same time the year before. The simple truth was that a year or a lifetime…she was ours and missing her when she wasn’t with us was as much a part of that as loving her was. It was funny, Lil Darlin wasn’t a particularly talkative child. She said what she wanted to say, but she didn’t usually talk for hours on end. Nikki talked the entire way from Lima to Cleveland almost without stopping. Well, it wasn’t actually Cleveland, it was actually about fifteen miles outside the city in a town called Berea. Baldwin Wallace University was a four-year private, coeducational, liberal arts college that had NCAA Division III sports teams. The school was not big…nor was it tiny. It had been founded by the Methodist church, so the older buildings on campus reminded me a little of churches.

We did the registration thing, everything had been prepaid, but we had to cough up a seventy-five buck cash key fee. Thankfully, Binkie had our back, because the only one of us who usually carried cash was Hudson, and she had stayed with the tour. Bubbie had probably had it…but she’d been kind enough to let us take Niks and she’d stayed behind in Lima. Once we had their room assignments, we helped the kids with taking all of their things to Ernsthausen Hall, where the three girls would be sharing a single room and Marcus would be forced to get to know two other roomies. Each kid had needed to bring a blanket or sleeping bag, Nikki, Jazz, Marcus and Michelle had brought both. They all had new sheets, two pillows, pillow cases, towels, laundry bag, coat hangers too. Best of all, it was all color coordinated. Marcus’s sleeping bag was Batman, so all his gear was either dark gray or golden yellow. Michelle had fallen in love with a Supergirl sleeping bag, so her things were royal purple or pink to match. Jazzy had gone with Tiana, of course, so her stuff was either deep purple or light green.

But Lil Darlin’ she did her Papa proud. She’d wanted a Princess Lea sleeping bag. So, I’d searched until I found the perfect thing. Okay, so I’d paid one of Kurt’s friends from FIT a grand to make her the perfect thing. There was a drawing of Lea in her battle gear, so a white battle suit, gold vest, brown boots, matching gloves and her blasters in black holsters on her hips. She was on a field of purple throwing the ‘Slave Lea’ costume away and saying ‘Nope’ emphatically. Suri, Kurt’s friend had gotten that printed or whatever onto fabric and made Nikolette a nice soft, totally double stuffed sleeping bag…and everything that wasn’t the picture looked like space. It was epic. So much so that hit Suri off with a two-hundred and fifty buck bonus and I had her working matching comforter sets for Lil Darlin and Punkin’s room in Lima. Nik-Nak’s stuff was all either purple or, when we could find it, stars on navy blue.

Mercedes, Elizabeth and Fina Cuoco had gotten them all shower caddies, shower shoes and all the shower necessities, soap, combs and brushes, toothbrush and paste, shampoo and conditioners, lotions…those kinds of things. Seriously, Mercy and Fina had totally educated Elizabeth on the fact that all people needed lotion all year round, not just women and not just in the winter. Poor Marcus was destined to be all kinds of metrosexual. The kids all also had two boxes of Kleenex tissues and a small fan. Bubbie, Darcy and Hudson had made sure that they all had unique pens, pencils, sixty-two gig USB flash drives on monogrammed lanyards. But the monogramming didn’t stop there. All four of the kids had personalized rain coats, a couple of hats, and wallets which contained around thirty dollars in spending money…all of it in singles and quarters since it was mainly for vending machines.

After spending half an hour signing shit for the kids and teens that would be our M-N-M & J’s buddies for their two weeks of camp, we got them all settled. Then we met back up in the girls’ dorm room. “You have your phones?” Nicholas Cuoco asked as the kids were giving us all hugs.

“Yes.” Their exasperation was real.

“Your chargers?” Trey added in.

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t forget to wear your shower shoes every time you go to the bathroom.” Mercedes chided. “You don’t want to catch athletes foot.”

“We won’t.” Jazzy assured her.

“If you need anything at all, you can call Suga Mama and Big Daddy and they will have it waiting on you next weekend when you go to Lima. If it’s an emergency, call Ms. Hudson and she can have whatever you need shipped her in twenty-four hours.” I reminded them.

“Yes, sir.”

“Call us every evening.” EA added.

“Every other evening is fine.” Fina changed it. “You can call anytime you want to…but you definitely have to call us every other day.”

Manny checked them out. “Your watches are waterproof. They are also your panic buttons. So, do not…I repeat do not take them off.” He didn’t mention that most of their stuff had GPS tracking enabled in it. Hector and Grunt were awesome.

Zip cosigned that as did the rest of the adults in the girls’ room, it afforded us the most privacy. “Manny and I will be here watching over you during the day, even if you don’t see us. So, if you need something that won’t even wait twenty-four hours, text us and we’ll see what we can do. We’ll definitely check in with you four at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Remember, no matter what anyone says or does…you do not take off those watches.”

When the kids agreed and reminded us that they weren’t idiots. We gave them another round of hugs. “We love you very much…all of you. So, take care of yourselves and each other. Call us to check in and call us if you need anything.” Puck summarized and then we had to leave. We had to make our noon flight to get to Jackson in time for our sound check.

Having forty-eight hours to ourselves capped off with those few hours with Lil Darlin’ was a perfect way to get our focus back where it needed to be. We sailed through those next couple of weeks on the road and, other than having to release a statement about the death of Sandra Bland in a Texas jail, how much more proof do people need that there is a reason for groups like Black Lives Matter. Anyway, before we knew it, we were in Tennessee. I loved being back in my home state. I’d grown up not far outside Nashville so we were in my stomping grounds. Well, like most states we had two shows in the state. The first one was in Memphis. The heart of Rock-in-Roll and the home of the King. The show was pretty epic. We’d changed up a lot of our covers so that we could include ‘Walking in Memphis’ and damn if hearing Mercedes Jones covering Pam Tillis’ ‘Maybe it Was Memphis’ didn’t give me such an epic boner that people literally talked about it on social media for three days after the concert. They might not have known for sure but that damn Blake, our biggest fan of a tour follower, had pictures of me on stage in that same outfit at a different concert with a mild stiffy…I always had those when performing…and he showed them side by side. Darcy was laughing so hard when she called to tell us that the side by side shot was trending number one on Instagram that she dropped her cell phone…twice.

We left Memphis immediately after we wrapped the Fed-EX Forum’s VIP meet and greets. Thankfully, the arrangements had been made for the video filming before Brantley had booked us for an after party there. I had to admit that after parties were definitely a lucrative sideline to the tour, so I didn’t complain about doing them, anymore. Probably, I’d have really enjoyed a Memphis after party…but we were all due on the set at eight in the morning. We all slept for the entire three or so hour drive between Memphis and my grandparents’ farm. MeMaw was letting us park the rigs there while we rushed to the studio since we weren’t able to check into the hotel until that afternoon. We were hopeful that she was going to allow us to make upgrades to the farm and to build our tour buses a barn among the outbuildings.

It was still a little up in the air…but not for the reasons most people would think. MeMaw had no problem with us building a barn to hold the four tour buses, two semi-trucks and trailers. What she had a problem with were the other improvements that we wanted to make to the farm. Mercy, Noah and I all agreed that we wanted to invest fully in the farm, bring it back to how it had been when Mom was little a thriving almost seven hundred acre working farm alive with livestock and food crops. Since PaPaw had passed, MeMaw had managed to keep all the land but most of the fields had been fallow ever since. She had sold off all but the breeding stock and the money she used to up keep the place came from the stud fees. But even then, she was keeping the outbuildings to a pretty low standard of upkeep, while focusing on maintaining the house and keeping a small personal garden. But she didn’t have a whole lot left over after she paid the two men who took care of the animals for her and the house and outbuildings. However, she was good with that. “I’m just trying to keep this all together for your brothers and sister if one of them or all of them decide to come and make this their home and livelihood.”

We thought that since we had enough money to make the updates and get things back up and running and possibly employ some people who were out of work and may have been for quite some time, we should. But MeMaw was stubborn. Momma was working on it for us. Especially since Stacey was making noise about going to Duke and majoring in agricultural science and management. But so far, she had also made noise about being a model, an actress, a fashion designer and a fireman. This was the first time she’d actually looked into schools. Duke was her first choice because she wanted to return to the south…and like most southerners thought Florida was not really the south. The Gator’s agricultural science and animal husbandry programs were ranked ninth in the entire world though, so she might should just get over that if she was serious about wanting to learn how to make the family farm a success once more.

MeMaw’s farm was not far outside of Nashville and was the most beautiful place on earth. It had started as seven farms back before the Civil War. It had belonged the seven Puckett cousins of that generation. When the war broke out, only three of them had sons. All seven of them had all fought for the Union, a fact every generation of Pucketts were very proud of…well one did enlist in the confederate army, but he did so as a spy and passed tons of information to his cousins through their women at home. Anyway, all only two made it back to Tennessee, but they never did have kids so the seven farms were combined and divided into thirds which passed to the three sons that had been born before the war. From there the land had been parceled out as needed. But in the last three or four generations, PaPaw had been the only Puckett interested in farming and living in the south at all…so the land had been combined into one big ass farm that he and MeMaw had been responsible for passing it on. Mom hadn’t minded the whole southern living part…but having grown up on the farm, she’d long ago discovered that she hated farming. I loved being outdoors and maybe in an alternate universe, I’d made the choice to take it over…one where I’d never met Mercedes Jones maybe…God that would have been a horrible universe.

When we got to the farm, the farmhouse was dark, as it should have been it was almost four in the morning. I wouldn’t have even known that if Jake hadn’t had Hudson get me so I could open the gate. Thankfully, MeMaw had made sure I had my own copy of the keys to her property when I turned eighteen so I was able to open the equipment gate without having to get her out of bed. I climbed back into bed with Mercy and Noah and got a couple more hours of sleep. Hudson was seriously epic…and I was kind of starting to wonder if she ever slept. She somehow managed to get us all up, presentable and over to the old bunk house where we found MeMaw and Grams Mae waiting on us with breakfast.

Mercy, me and Noah were all pretty shocked to see Grams Mae, but apparently she and MeMaw had worked her visit out between themselves over Father’s Day break after we’d made the arrangement to leave the vehicles at the farm during our shoot. Those amazing ladies had created quite the spread. There were biscuits, both buttermilk and plain, an assortment of jellies, jams, preserves, syrups and hot sausage gravy to go with them. They had made homemade blueberry, blackberry, honey bran and my personal favorite, praline pecan, muffins. All of that was accompanied by bacon, sausage and eggs. But best of all…MeMaw had made The Coffee! Capitalization and exclamation mark were both well deserved.

The Puckett coffee was something that people had died for, seriously, there was one former Puckett spouse who had tried to sell the secret to Starbucks…it hadn’t ended well. Cousin Pam had told him not to do it. He hadn’t listened. Stupid bastard. Okay, so he probably wasn’t dead…nobody had seen him since nineteen-ninety- three…but probably he’d run away to Canada with a waitress or something. I could definitely see her making him scared enough to disappear. One day, I was going to find out why Cousin Pam and Coach Sylvester looked like twins…though Coach was about six or seven years older than Cousin Pam…but still inquiring minds wanted to know. MeMaw must have really loved me because she made vats of The Coffee! And it was a family secret recipe that wasn’t even shared among the whole family…just the special ones. I mean, Girl Sam had gotten to learn, but not Melanie and they were twins. MeMaw had already told me that I was too heavy handed…but she figured Stevie was pretty much the perfect one of us to learn from her.

Breakfast was a loud, raucous…cowboy like…meal. Afterwards, everyone thanked MeMaw and Grams Mae, a few, like Xena even asked them if they were looking to add any grandchildren through adoption. We cleaned up behind ourselves too, even taking the time to carry things back to the bunkhouse kitchen and wash and put them away for MeMaw so she wouldn’t have to fool with it. Still, when the vans got there to take us to the studio, we were all ready, including both of our grandmothers who were present. The drive to the NuMynd Studios wasn’t long at all, just a bit over thirty minutes. Brantley, Darcy and Kurt were there awaiting our arrival, even if we were a little early. They had actually flown in from Cleveland and were accompanied by the real stars of our video, Tamir Rice’s mother Samaria Rice and his sister, Tajai, who had been in the park with him that fateful day. We’d invited Mr. Dylan to join us in the video since he didn’t have to let us cover ‘Ballad of Emmit Till’ but the veteran rock legend had declined. However, his son Jakob came to represent the family. I could not tell who had swooned harder Joaquina or Erika.

Jamal showed up with his brother Andre about ten minutes after we got there. Cookie was on probation so she couldn’t exactly leave New York. She did dip to Philly a time or two to see her family, but we all agreed that Nashville was a little far afield and we didn’t want her getting into trouble. Still an entourage was a necessity for any Lyon or Empire artist, so it wasn’t just Jamal and Andre, but they were the only ones important enough to get to talk to us. Part of that entourage was his personal makeup artist. “Man, my skin is so sensitive if I even look at a mirror wrong, I have an allergic reaction.” He’d explained when Puck teased him gently about the diva-like behavior.

The two local choirs, one from Christ Church, a predominantly White congregation, and the other from Mt. Zion Baptist Church, a predominantly Black congregation. Both choirs were present and accounted for by ten minutes to eight while Skye and her mom rolled in right on the dot. Kurt and Bubbie Ruth had managed to corral the two head choir directors and gotten every one’s sizes and measurements and the had ordered two hundred and fifty or so of the ivory off the shoulder mermaid lace and tulle gowns from the Tadashi Shoji fashion house and the equal number of off-white Perry Ellis men’s linen suits. They had been told to bring their own ivory or brown shoes, comfortable but Sunday go to meeting appropriate. Hudson and Kurt had arranged for pretty much every hair and makeup person in West-Central Tennessee to turn out and somehow, the choir was ready to go by the time the director Sing J. Lee, studio manager Nick Eagles…that poor dude had geeked out as hard as Artie when he got to meet Mr. Lee. Sing was an awesome guy. He’d flown in from Britain to do our video all based on the theme Artie had come up with and the message of the song. Anyway, the choir was ready to go when the Director and studio manager were ready to place them. It probably did help that the women of Mt. Zion had arrived with their hair and nails all not just done…but Did.

The theme was a simple one…Peace. We were all sure that poor little Tamir’s soul was at peace. He was only twelve when he was murdered after all. So, the choir would be in soft ivory, the band was set to be in pure white linen and the singers were all in blue. We’d even rented all white instruments. Before we’d even gotten to the studio, the space had been transformed into one huge pulpit. We were shoved into our own apparel with hair and makeup done and on set. The three of us, plus our dancers in flowing blue dresses and tank shirts and wide legged white pants. It may not have been a New York or LA production…but this was not a cheap video to make. The clothing budget alone was pretty ridic. Since we had agreed to mention the fashion houses in our liner notes that would come with the purchase of the video, even digitally, both Tadashi Shoji and Perry Ellis had given us a huge break on the cost of the dresses and suits for the choir. Bubbie’s connection at Macy’s was a mother herself and she had gifted the clothes for the Rices to them, so they would both be leaving with a new dress and shoes. The Alexander McQueen Periwinkle wool and silk jacket that Jakob would be wearing had been a steal, at least according to Kurt…but even half off was expensive when the original price tag was over sixteen hundred bucks. Yeah, there may have been a reason they made it a practice to never tell me the cost of the clothes they bought for me.

While we were getting set up on our side of the shoot, Mr. Lee was in Studio B, a smaller space which had been turned into a quintessential American park setting. Samara Rice was seated at a white painted picnic table under a pure white gazebo going through a blue photo album of pictures of her son. She was dressed in a royal blue embellished and draped gown from Adrianna Papell. Her braids arranged into an intricate crown atop her head. As she got to the older shots, those most people had seen on the news, she was joined by her daughter. Tajai’s dress was a brighter blue, and simpler and yet more complicated Rickie Freeman for Teri Jon scuba dress with a sculptural side ruffle. Grams Mae and MeMaw took seats across from them. Both of the grandmothers in shades of blue. Though all three dresses were by the same designer, their dresses were even simpler than Tajai’s. Together the Black and White grandmothers took the hands of the mourning mother and sister and even without hearing their words, it was easy to see that they were praying with and for the Rice family. Then Grams and MeMaw stood and moved around the table and sat surrounding the family as Samaria showed them the pictures in the album. That whole portion of the video was synced with the first verse and it looked so deep and profound.

When Sing Lee came in, we were all in position. Jamal and Skye seated together at a huge, white grand piano. Mercy standing beside it, her hip against the wood. Jakob, Puck and I settled on dark wooden stools with our guitars arrayed out behind her. The large choir seated in the ‘pulpit’s’ choir stand.

The Ballad of Tamir Rice

In America’s heartland,  
The new lynchings are state sanctioned events.  
A child gone so soon, lost to fear and tragedy  
A call for help, as we’re taught to do  
Was turned into a call to arms too good to resist

In the greatest land on all the earth  
The boy’s dreadful calamity is becoming far too common  
Though history tells a different tale…  
It’s happened far too often

We played the slow, mournful, soul song with its usual gospel like reverence. Lee didn’t have play back going. He had us simply playing and singing, though the track would later be added and synced as needed. The choir lifted their voices on the controversial, and every bit as angry as I was feeling when I wrote it, chorus.

You stole his life, you took his youth  
Yet victim blame and color shame  
All to hide your own bitter truth  
You’re a coward with a gun and lies to proclaim

We actually had to take a break at that point. One of the white men in the choir raised his hand. “It’s a tragedy and all, but the guy did reach to his waist band and the cops had been told he had a gun.”

I put down my guitar and turned around. “He was a twelve year old BOY. He wasn’t a guy. That implies he had some age to him. He was a child and the cops rolled up on him like he was a goddamn terrorist with a suicide belt on. Who knows what they yelled at him…if they even had time to say anything. Two seconds. Let me ask you sir, when you were twelve, if you were playing in a park with a toy gun and the cops came rolling up to you like that what would have happened?”

“They’d have probably taken me home and my old man would have tanned my hide.” The man admitted.

“Exactly.” I hissed. “The same thing would have happened to half the people in this room. Not because we’d done anything different than that little boy did. But because our skin color was the same as the cops. We hear all the time about some White man, old enough to know better, ‘oh he’s a good boy, he just made a stupid mistake’. We’re afforded the chance to be boys long after we’ve become men, yet there are actual kids who are seen as grown because they have brown skin. It’s time to stop that bullshit.” I knew I was crying. I couldn’t help it. Every time I thought of that poor kid, all I could think was of my Stevie shot down for being a kid and playing.

“Besides, if that Loehmann feller was so sure he was in the right, why wouldn’t they help that child?” One of the other White men said almost quietly. “By that point they saw what they had done and they were ashamed. They chose to let that poor child die because it’s a lot easier to win ‘he said, she said’ against a dead child. I’ve been a cop for fourteen years. I ain’t ever fired my weapon without being damn sure who I was firing at. We’re supposed to protect and serve the community…not shoot children and then just let them die. They were more worried about covering their own asses then being decent human beings. Then those bastards with a badge couldn’t even let his sister go to him. They cuffed her and sat her in a cruiser and were cruel enough to damn well make sure she could watch the light leave her brother’s eyes. They did that just to make sure that she would be too scared to pay attention to what they were saying and doing. It makes me sick to think of it. To think that they call themselves officers of the law and carry the same badge I hold dear. And that whole Blue Lives bullshit…I chose to be a cop. It’s a choice I’ve reaffirmed a million times. I can take off my uniform anytime I want. Black folks can’t stop being Black.”

One of the Black women stood up and went over to the police officer. “Thank you. We hear so often people saying Black Lives Matter is a racist or supremacist thing. It’s not. We aren’t saying that Black Lives Matter more, just that they matter too.”

“Well, of course they do. You might not think they matter more, but I sure as hell think some of them do. I have never encountered an African American who had evil in their hearts the way some of my own family has.” An older white lady said firmly. “Hell, the woman who raised me, who taught me everything I know about how to love and be a good Christian woman…she was darker than midnight. Ms. Lottie always told me that she wasn’t able to have kids herself so God gave me to her to make up for it. My parents fired Ms Lottie when I was fourteen because they decided that I’d outgrown the only person to show me true, real unconditional love in that house. They might have fired her, but until the day I finished my doctorate, Ms. Lottie called me every week to check on me and make sure I was working hard in school and trying to make more of my life than my parents ever thought I could. My brothers were supposed to be the family pride…I was just a girl. Well, thanks to Ms. Lottie…I’m a college professor and author, when nobody told me I could be more than a wife and mother. My eldest brother, he’s a sick bastard…likes to claim he’s a good Christian…but if you look he’s in both the Klan and NAMBLA. When I had my own children, I went and brought Ms. Lottie home to live with us. My mother may have called herself ‘Grandmother’ but Ms. Lottie was the grandmother they went to for love and affirmation. And, ya know what, when Ms. Lottie passed, I used my high falutin’ parents’ money to throw her the finest funeral Spruce Street Baptist Church ever did see.” She chortled. 

A Black woman of around the same age, later fifties or early sixties, laughed. “That was a nice funeral. Lottie Jenkins was my Momma’s cousin. She was always really proud of her little Charlotte. That’s you right?”

Apparently it was because the next thing we knew the two women were sitting together and talking. Somehow that seemed to open some sort of flood gate. Before we knew it, people were finding folks they knew from school and work and their neighborhoods and the choir was fully integrated, not just the sort of rough, within their vocal sections packing they’d originally been sitting in. Sing Lee smiled and got us rolling again. Mercedes voice had empowered the first verse. The second was all Jamal

Two seconds, just a moment and a half of time  
Yet you demanded and expected compliance to an order unheard  
Four minutes was a lifetime and a half never to be  
A boy’s body slain, a world cut short, a dream deferred

Unfit for duty, yet hired anyway,  
Protected and elevated by the white of your skin  
The very privilege that allowed you your badge  
The root and the enablement of your horrible sin

The choir repeated the chorus, somehow the same voices seemed so different, so much more powerful when raised together that time.

You stole his life, you took his youth  
Yet victim blame and color shame  
All to hide your own bitter truth  
You’re a coward with a gun and lies to proclaim

I had the bridge, unusual for me, but they were my words and I didn’t want anyone else taking the flack for them. If the person listening couldn’t see my rage and sorrow…they weren’t paying attention.

Loehmann was no man just a coward who never had a clue  
Killing and abusing the very ones you vowed to protect and serve  
Yet you’ve been supported and sheltered by your brotherhood of blue

 

The final verse alternated between Skye and Mercedes. Her voice was softer and lighter than Mercy’s but her lament was chilling. Together, making points that added up to complicity of my whole race was a daunting truth that seemed too firmly rooted to ever be changed.

(Skye) A sister cries as her brother dies, she begs you for just a shred of humanity  
(Mercy) Killing generations of Black men and women hiding behind the old excuse  
(Skye) You threaten a mother as her baby lies bleeding from your insanity  
(Mercy) So many lives ended as they ‘reached for a gun’ they couldn’t even use

(Skye) So People of Color, we scream and we rail at the injustice of it all  
(Mercy) Hoping and praying that one day this nation will live up to the mission of its pledge  
(Skye) Some White people get it and when we rise they always answer our call  
(Mercy) America, until brotherhood is real and love is shared, then we’re all standing on the edge

The choir brought the chorus back to life once more before we went into the final bridge. The last four lines were almost fully from the inspiration song, a suggestion from a legend that had been an opportunity we couldn’t refuse. On stage it was usually left to Puck to sing, but with a Dylan present, he couldn’t not share. 

(Puck) This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man  
(Jakob) That this kind of thing still lives today outside that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan  
(Puck) But if all of us folks that think alike, if we gave all we could give  
(Jakob) We could make this great land of ours a Greater place to live.

Sing Lee was an efficient director. He didn’t have us there all day. He had filmed the scenes with the Rices and the grandmothers while we were all getting in place in the larger studio. Sing Lee had added the grandmothers to the original scene that was supposed to have just been the mother and daughter. He had made the change when he realized that MeMaw and Gram Mae had costuming there for them as well. Then, while he was filming we five leads, the band and the choir in one studio, his top assistant filmed the dancers, all in blue and white, dancing through the playground to the song pipped through the studio’s audio system. Rainbow had come up with a modern-interpretative dance that was beautiful and yet horrifying at the same time. It told a story of struggle through the centuries, all in one modern playground. Ultimately the dance ended with all the People of Color in various rigor poses on the ground while only Joseph and Kelli stood. Though even then the way it finished, Joseph seemed to be physically dominating Kelli. It was ghastly…but I defied anyone to tell me that wasn’t how certain elements of our society felt things should be. Then they ran through the second choreography, which ended with everyone happy and together…as it could be and should have always been.

We wrapped up and thanked the choir members with fifty dollar gift cards to Target and matching ones for Darden Restaurants. They could go to any Olive Garden, Longhorns, Yard House, Bahama Breeze, Cheddar’s or Seasons 52 for a meal. Hudson and Haja had worked out a deal where we’d gotten a hell of a discount…actually since we were scheduled to do a Target commercial and let Darden use the background music from ‘ColorBlind’ in one of their ads, I think we actually made money off that one. We did also make pretty hefty donations to their churches too, so everyone was happy. We dragged Mrs. Rice and Tajai, Sing and his assistants, Skye and her mom, Mal and Andre and Jakob out to have dinner with us and the Crew. Hudson had made the arrangements, but she wasn’t there when we finally wrapped around seven. She texted us that she would meet us at the restaurant. She’d actually gone to the Omni, where Kurt, Brantley, Darcy and the Rices already had rooms to get us checked in and get our keys. She’d also handled getting the tour crew, who had spent the day exploring Music Row and Nashville on the whole, checked in to their hotel at the Holiday Inn Express Downtown near the Arena. The promoter was handling all the rooms but our three people and the Rices, so we couldn’t exactly fuss about that the tour crew wasn’t listed in the contract as those person who had to be in the same hotel with us.

The dinner was amazing. We offered Jakob a chance to join Jamal, Skye and the Rices as our guests the next night. I was a little surprised that he accepted but he must have known that the invitation included the performance too. The next day was spent getting ready for the show while Kurt and Darcy took Ms. Samaria and Tajai to a day spa. The actual concert was an epic event. Todrick was amazing. He and Jamal got along so well that Mal ended joining him for a few songs too. Cass’s set included protest songs and driving African beats. We actually did the encore as the first set and ended the show with the two ballads, while behind us and on all the vid screens was a list of people of every color who had been killed by police while unarmed or lynched by the Klan no matter what they were calling themselves at the time. That night when people left they weren’t rushing out to go and make love, as we usually tried to inspire…instead they were deep in conversation…and thought. Maybe we could make some small change. I really did hope so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright people...this time I really do need you all to chime in with your opinions.   
> I've not written poetry (in this case song lyrics) since college, and that was way longer ago than it actually seems in my head.   
> I need to know what you think of them.   
> Drop me a comment, let me know if they were in anyway decent. 
> 
> Also, sorry for the delay in posting.   
> I wish I could blame Dragon-Con, but a family emergency meant not only did I not get to post, but I also missed my Sci-fi loving heart's Christmas-slash-Halloween.  
> So drop me a comment to make me smile after the suckiest Labor Day Weekend I've personally ever had, and that includes the one when I caught my boyfriend and my best, non-Illy, friend going at it like rabid weasels. Yeah, it was that bad. 
> 
> Sorry for the lack of comedy or at least political commentary in these author notes. Its been that kind of day.   
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	10. People Get Ready (Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions) & Rockaway Beach (The Ramones)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The conclusion of KAMA's visit to Music City and Commune and Friends hit the Windy City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> Thanks to DaughterofDarkness87 a most awesome Beta

Chapter 10

People Get Ready (Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions)  
Mercedes PoV

Nashville was what I mentally called a NEWT city. Nastily Exhausting certainly fit. It definitely tested my physical, mental and emotional limits. One day, I’d figure out what the mental W meant since wizarding did not apply. It came too close after Fort Worth, which was a hellacious night and morning. I took it pretty personal that someone had harmed a girl at one of our shows. It pissed me off that any man thought he had the right to harm a female but to do so at a show that was all about love…MY Show…OUR Show. Yeah, naw…that made me very, very angry on a deeply personal level that was extremely hard to put into words. And I knew that Sam and Noah felt the same way. I shook off those thoughts and my mind returned to the emotional havoc that I’d had to deal with and handle in a mature fashion just a week later. I had taken a moment to speak with Ms. Rice during one of our breaks from filming our second ‘fundraiser’ video. I mean, it would be played on music video channels and everything, but a large portion of the proceeds from the streams and purchases would be given to the legal defense fund Puck had theorized and that Uncle Ethan had begun to bring to reality after our business meeting in Atlanta. “I want to thank you again for allowing us to record this song and to make this video. Are you sure…” I began only to get cut off. 

“I’m very sure. I miss my baby in a way I hope you are never really able to understand. But, no matter what those Fox News talking head types have to say, I’m not in this for a paycheck. I just want my son to live on and for the police to stop and think when they have someone’s life in their hands. I just know that this song is going to help to keep Tamir alive in people’s memories. Like Mr. Dylan’s song helped to do for Emmitt Till.” She told me stridently.  
I nodded in understanding. “Yes Ma’am…but you didn’t have to choose us. I know that plenty of people have asked you for this chance…this opportunity to honor your little boy.”

Samaria gave me a wry grin. “Do you know why I said yes to you three? It was you and your voice, yes…but mainly it was your White boy…Sam, not Noah. Noah seems like he would love nothing more than five minutes alone with those two cops, but they would all end up coming out of the room alive. Sam…he was the first person who seemed like Tamir would never just be a name to him. In a different world…a better one maybe…my baby would have grown up to be friends with Sam’s brother, Stevie. They would have been on the basketball team together at Ohio State and gone on to keep up with each other as they got married and had kids of their own. Ya know?” Her smile was so sad, I couldn’t help but ache for her loss. 

“I know that nothing will ever make your loss better. But I am praying for you and your family.” I finally said the only thing I could think of that didn’t seem like some stupid, but well-meaning platitude. 

“I’ll take it. We need all the prayer we can get.” She said honestly. 

Her daughter came over to show her something Kurt had given her and I took the time to head to the bathroom and have a mini-break down. It was Gramma Mae who found me huddled in a corner of a convenience loveseat in the antechamber of the ladies’ room in a designer lace cocktail dress. At first, she didn’t say a word, just hugged me close. I don’t know how long she just held me as I wept, but finally she quietly spoke truth to power. “You know MeDe Baby, you and your boys are doing a good thing with this song. You’re giving a name to all the men, women and children whose lives are cut short by people we’re always told we should be able to trust. Tamir Rice isn’t the only one, not by a long shot…but neither was Emmitt Till. There were lynchings throughout the south not just in the fifties and sixties, but going all the way back to after the Civil War. They claimed that they had their reasons to kill this black man or kill that black boy…but it all boiled down to one thing, fear.” 

“Fear not hate?” 

“Baby, you’re gonna find that at the root of almost all hate is fear. I hate snakes because I’m scared as hell of them. For a lot of White people, its fear of being shown to be just like the rest of their fellow humans, poor Whites especially. I can understand it to a certain point. When the only thing you have going for you is the color of your skin, the scariest thing you can ever face is equality. What they fail to realize is that the ones with all the money, they are counting on that fear and, they will use and abuse that fear to make sure that those same poor Whites never stop to look at who and what is keeping them so poor.” 

“If the poor ever banned together, the wealthy wouldn’t know what hit them.” I smiled evilly. 

Gramma Mae chuckled. “I wouldn’t enjoy that thought too hard Baby, you and your boys are far from poor and getting closer and closer to wealthy every time I turn around.” 

I shook my head with a laugh of my own. “Nope, we’re doing alright. But Nikki and Bethany and the kids we have together in a few years, they’re gonna have to have jobs of their own too. Maybe our great-grand kids will be able to live off the family money…but then their Great-Granddaddy Sam would figure out how to haunt them for being silly and lazy.”

“Oh, he sho-would.” Gramma Mae laughed. “Sam don’t want his family to be truly poor ever again…but he would hate it if they acted like Paris Hilton or those Kardashian kids.” We shared a moment of humor before she got serious again. “You know, you’ve got both sides of this in your blood Baby. One of my mother’s brothers was killed by police. They said that he had tried to take their gun, but he was shot in the back. We might not have had all the forensic science that is available now. But we did know bullets made small holes going in and big ones coming out. Max was twenty years old, on his way home from school in Alabama. He’d never hurt a soul, off the football field. But they shot him dead because, how dare a Black boy go to college. He was just an uppity n-word to them.”

“On the other side, your PopPop…he had a cousin who was a cop. Ginger was a good cop. She got shot on a routine traffic stop. Back before there were cell phones or even on the shoulder radios. She bled out before another car came along and saw her lights on. If she hadn’t called in his license plate before she got out the car, they would never have caught the asshole. Thing about it was the guy who killed her was a twenty-year-old college student. He was White, went to an Ivy League school. Started running drugs because his father would only give him a thousand dollars a month for his allowance and he wanted to make easy money. I always wondered what he needed more than what would be about thirty-one hundred bucks per month to do. It wasn’t like he had bills to pay. Anyway, MeDe, his life ended because Ginger was a cop in a state where killing a cop got you an automatic death penalty. His father, he had other sons, and was pissed off as hell at the entitled moron he’d raised so he wouldn’t pay for all the appeals and such. The public defenders weren’t all that involved in trying to get him off, especially since the prosecutor had pretty much gotten an on the stand confession. The asshole even said he’d shot her because she was an ‘uppity n-word bitch’ who thought she was important just because she had a badge.” 

“I’ve heard myself called an uppity n-word backstage at a couple of our first award shows. Then the same chick smiled like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and congratulated me like she hadn’t just said that racist shit under her breath.” I admitted. “I personally didn’t care, we’d just spanked her in more than a few categories. It was sour grapes. Now, every time we beat her…it makes my heart smile in a way I don’t feel about the other nominees.” 

Gramma cackled. “Well, Baby…they always said that living well is the best revenge. Now go dry your face and let’s go let your girl Trina make you all camera ready. And you just remember, there has been a lot of change in the last fifty years. Not near enough sometimes…and we’ve still got a ways to go, but things are better.” 

“And we’ll do our part to make more change happen.” I said solemnly.

With those words, I was able to refocus and we got the video in the can. On the way to the restaurant we had a good, ten-minute chat with M-N-M&J, they were loving the camp and could definitely see going back the next summer too. We had dinner that night in the restaurant that MeMaw Rose swore was Sam’s favorite place to eat in the whole state. Arnold’s was an iconic meat and three sides restaurant that had been going strong since the early eighties. I had to admit, the fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese and cornbread were all really good. Almost as good as MeMaw’s or Gabby’s. After dinner, we took ourselves to our rooms at the Omni. The love we made that night was slow and sweet and affirming. Even Noah needed to fill back up on the love that evening. It was raw and telling of exactly how emotionally draining that whole process had been.

The next morning we were actually up pretty early. It was a show day and we had a routine to keep. I was up about an hour before Sam and Noah. I used that time to take care of my skin. Wearing stage makeup under the lights and heat, I’d had to step up my skin care game. It also meant that wigs or not, once a week, I did a deep condition mask on my hair and spent an hour luxuriating in a cocoa butter and shea butter body balm to keep my skin nice and lubricated, because ashy was just not classy. I could admit it, I’d have killed for a nice, deep tissue massage, but there just wasn’t any time for me to have a spa day…well not in Nashville. I texted Hudson to see if we could hit one when we hit Lexington the day we reached Kentucky’s largest city. Once the guys were up and breakfast was had by all, we worked out with the rest of the crew. We took over the fitness center for just over an hour, filling every machine and trading off to something new every fifteen minutes. It was a pretty good center with bench presses, free weights, leg presses, life rowers, inclined sit-up boards and, of course, stationary bicycles and treadmills. It had been a great work out and we were moving a little more slowly on the way back up to our room. But after our showers, we were good to go again.

Once everyone had finished circuiting the fitness center, we all showered and met in the private dining area of the Kitchen Notes in the Hotel. After lunch, we broke up and Sam, Noah and I returned to our room and called the parental units while they were on their way back to work from their own lunch breaks. Once we’d spoken to our families, we took some time to answer emails and fan mail. Then we headed to the Rupp Arena to practice and run our sound checks. I was glad that practice, sound check and the concert itself all ran like clockwork. We did our Meet and Greet with our guests of honor seated on the couch in our dressing room, then we invited everyone to the after party. But the grandmothers both begged off and the Rices had an even better reason, Tajai was way too young to party and they had a pretty early flight the next day. However, both of them couldn’t stop talking about their spa experience and the tour of Music City that Kurt and Darcy had arranged for them to fill their day. It made me feel good to make their lives brighter for at least one weekend. 

Nashville was a major American music mecca, so of course the after party was a must attend. The Nashville promoter was actually a big ass music name. Louis Messina was actually president of AEG Live and yet he was cool with taking on KAMA for just one city. He was not disappointed. We’d played to a completely sold out twenty-thousand seat arena. The after party was held at one of the largest clubs on Broadway, the iconic Wild Horse Saloon. The place was so packed, we had to send those of our crew who were under twenty-one back to the hotel. The after party was pretty ridiculous. We spent quite a little while speaking with John Esposito, the head of Warner Nashville. He was pretty awesome. We knew that we needed to make the best possible impression. When Sam got ready to record his solo album, it would be going through the head of Warner’s country arm…Mr. Esposito. The better he liked Sam, the more likely he would be to take Sam’s opinions into consideration when deciding track lists and any squabbles between Sam and his producers. We also had a long conversation with the executive VP of content and programming at Cumulus Media. Music stars were nothing without radio plays. The industry was changing and growing to include digital and social media too, but there was still nothing like hearing your album on the radio. We were shocked to learn that our songs ‘Homewrecker’, ‘Amazing’ and ‘Some Gave All’ were being played on country stations. They were the most country feeling of our tracks, so the latter two didn’t surprise me. But I led ‘Homewrecker’…I expected the Sam songs, they were almost pure country with rock undertones. ‘Homewrecker’ was an R&B song with a country riff. At least that was how I thought of it. But according to Mr. Dickey, it was a very much requested song across their country stations. “Which is no small feat considering that it is at best a B-side.” He said positively. “Just remember, there are artist that never have to leave their roots to cross over, Aretha, Reba, Garth, Prince, Metallica…those are just a few that are household names in every home in the world without changing anything about their music.”

“Thank you. I suppose I understand that…and there have been other Black artists in country music. I mean, Hootie…I mean Darius Rucker and Charlie Pride just off the top of my head. But I’ve always considered myself very R&B-soul so I never considered this a possibility.” I stammered. “Wow.” 

“A voice like yours deserves to be recognized.” He said before drifting away to speak with the head of Sony Nashville who was there also. 

To be honest, the whole party was like a who’s who of the Nashville music scene. It didn’t end until after five in the morning. We showered and caught a couple of hours of sleep before we loaded the buses and headed to meet the tour crew and rigs in Lexington. Our first stop was not the hotel or the venue. We pulled into the ZiYan Salon and Day Spa. We all had massages and manicures and pedicures and facials it was just a great day. Then we checked into our rooms at the Hyatt Regency Lexington. The show went well. We had a short issue with the three sixty video screens during Todrick’s show. But we got it fixed and things went well for the rest of the night. We ended up having to pull out one of the backup snares and send Dave’s primary one for repairs after the show, but little things like that just didn’t seem as catastrophic as they had before Fort Worth. While the Rupp was an even bigger venue than the Bridgestone Arena had been, Lexington was a smaller town, so there wasn’t an after party there. Instead we did our load out and headed to St. Louis. We also said goodbye to Todrick and welcomed Alessia back into our tour. Alessia would be with us through the states considered the Heartland.

We spent Santana’s birthday at Six Flags Over St. Louis, even going so far as to have a birthday party, complete with her family and in-laws at the Macho Nacho with funnel cakes from a nearby vendor. Santana was more than happy. She especially loved the five-thousand-dollar Louboutin gift certificate I gave her, and the matching ones for Neiman Marcus and Saks that Sam and Puck had given our friend. For Tana though, nothing beat getting to wear a crown and a beauty queen sash that said Birthday Queen on it all around the park all day. We had a blast all day. Best of all, as a thank you for us flying them in to be with their daughter on her birthday, the Lopezes had brought Beth and Nikki with them so we got to spend two extra unexpected days with our daughters. It was an amazing time. From there we went up to Champaign, Illinois for a Saturday night, sold out show at the State Farm Center and then we headed to Chicago. 

There was no way we were staying in a hotel in a city where we had an apartment. So we had Hudson make the crew’s arrangements and had the Chicago promoter reimburse us. We got the Crew, the tour crew and the original New Directions rooms at the Hampton Inn Chicago Downtown. Chicago was a very important stop for one of our tribe and something told me that it would be best to have the whole crew there for her momentous occasion. We’d also gotten a two queen studio suite there for Shelby, David and Beth. We’d have gotten Francine a room of her own as well, but she was already living in the city for the summer for her internship. After much discussion, we let Russel Fabray in on the details. Neither Puck nor Sam were happy with giving him that courtesy, but I knew Quinn. Despite all that had happened, she’d want him there…if for no other reason than to rub her happiness and well-adjusted future in his face. But he was on his own for paying for his stay. As much as I thought Que deserved her spite…I wasn’t paying for it. 

However, as far as Quinnie knew, all our friends were coming to Chicago to go to Six Flags with us and just to hang considering that we had some good down time. Everyone was in town by Sunday afternoon, but James had to take Quinn to dinner with his family…most of whom were in town for ‘the concert’ as well. I’d met and talked to James cousins Tommy and Junior enough times that I knew for sure it was better her than me. Me, Sammy and Noah all agreed that as much as we loved our friends, and even as much as we loved our Beth, we’d send them all sightseeing while we held up in our apartment all day that Sunday, making love until we almost couldn’t walk. 

I loved being loved by Sam and Noah, anywhere or anytime…but there was a freedom in making love in our little three bedroom Chicago condo. Since we’d been there only a month before there was no need to feel like we had to cram in all the freaky-deaky shit we tended to get up to when there. Though there was something about the privacy afforded us there that made all three of us more inventive and adventurous. Saturday night our lovemaking was lazy and languid…ironically, it was easy like Sunday morning. But after a great night’s sleep, a healthy breakfast and a long hot shower, Sunday morning’s lovemaking was on and poppin’, I’d discovered a fascination with bondage that was almost sick in intensity. Not a random, ‘tie me down and fuck me hard’, bondage -though that was a thing I really did love- but no. I’d realized that I was a sick, sick puppy and it was all Sam’s fault. Okay, that was probably not fair. I’d always known that my breasts were over sensitive and the quickest way to bring myself off was to hurt them some. I never knew about breast binding until Sam had introduced me to it that long-ago night, senior year. It had been so good that I’d passed the hell out after so many orgasms I couldn’t count them all. We’d played with it once or twice more since then and every time was black out good. 

While we were still in Nashville, I’d done a little reading and then a little shopping online. I’d seen the things meant especially for the play I wanted to engage in, but even the silk ropes were pretty ugly. I stumbled onto a blog from a Black female submissive and she had truly awesome tip. The silk or satin anti-breakage sleep scarves that were basically just a yard or two long and four to five inches wide…the kind you could find even at Sprawl-Mart, they worked perfectly. They could be used straight or twisted into prettier rope-type deals. I checked the Sprawl-Mart site and sure enough they had them in two colors, I’d ordered five of each, hoping that it would be enough for what I wanted to do. I’d gotten a text alert saying that they had been delivered during our sound check the day before. I’d grabbed them out of our mail box on our way up the night before. Sam and Puck had barely paid attention to the package, they had had other things on their mind, so it had been easy to stash it in our closet. 

After our shower, I looked over at my handsome men. “Ummm…I want to play with something new.” I paused. “Well, it’s not new, we’ve done it before…but I got us a new way to play it, and I thought that maybe we could make it a more regular part of our play time.” 

Sam came over and gave me a long slow deep kiss. “What’s on your mind Baby?” he whispered when he pulled back.

“You and Noah head into the bedroom. I’ll grab my new toys and meet you there.” I said happily. I was damn near skipping when I ripped open the larger brown puffy envelope. I grabbed the five bright white scarves and took them into the bedroom. 

“Mmmm, Babygirl, what is going on in that sexy head of yours?” Noah teased pulling me into his arms. “You wanting us to tie you down and fuck you good. We already have some good stuff for that.” 

Sam, on the other hand, came over and took the plastic packs from me opening them and enjoying the feel of the silks in his hand. “No, these wouldn’t work for tying her hands and feet. They slip and slide too much.” I could almost see when he realized what the silkier scarves would be perfect for. “Noah, go look in the chest and find those nipple clamps with the tension screws. Mercy wants us to make her beg and scream by torturing her sexy ass titties again.” 

I nodded a little hesitantly but decided to pull on my big girl drawers and ask for what I wanted, the whole nine yards. “Can you get the blindfold and the cuffs too?” 

“Ohhhh, shit Sexy Mama, you’re gonna let us play with you for real today aren’t you?” Noah drawled sexily as he got the other accessories to the game I’d been dreaming of playing for months. 

I smiled confidently. “Yessss.” The sibilant tone surprised all of us, but none more than me. It sounded kind of dangerous…and sexy. 

Sam took his time twisting the scarves and drawing them around and between each of my breasts winding them together and tying them off to bind me right against my ribs, and then again halfway up the long slope. His southern was showing as he spoke gently to me while he did his work. “Fuck, Mercy, it’s so damn sexy, you making moves and going after what you want. I love how confident you are. Even when you’re blushin’ you make sure that your wants and desires are seen to. I love your big, sexy titties. Love that we can drive you wild just playing with them.” He murmured. Once the two layers of binding were in place, tied tightly, but not so tightly that our game would need to end too soon, I was blind folded and led over to the bed. Rather than cuffing my hands together, Puck had grabbed two of the long shackles and they cuffed me to the curls and curves of the cutouts in our head board. I bit back a moan when both of their mouths closed on each of my nipples. With the blood barely starting to tingle in my breasts, my nipples were already beginning to get hyper-sensitive. 

“Ut-huh.” Noah chided. “We want to hear every,” lick, “single,” flick, “sound.” 

My back arched of its own volition. Somehow, it made the ‘rope’ tighten, only for it to go back to the way it had been when I relaxed. I straight up whimpered. “Good Girl.” Sam rewarded me. I would say I was slightly ashamed at how wet those two words made me, but I’d have been lying. No matter what form our love making took, it was still an expression of love between the three of us. There was no place for shame in the physical manifestation of our love. Noah was the first one to pull away and affix a clamp to the swollen, hardened nipple he’d been teasing, but Sam followed soon thereafter. I could feel their eyes on me as they sat back and admired their handy work. A new tension filled the room as one by one they moved off the bed. I strained to tell where they had gone. I was pretty sure that I heard the bedroom door open but not close. I soon became absolutely sure that one of them was still there with me as I heard the play chest open and close a couple of times and then the nightstand drawers opened and closed a time or two. 

A scream was wrenched from my throat when something I could only guess was an ice cube touched the very tip of my very much engorged and captive nipple. The stab of cold drew back. “Do you need to use your word, Baby?” 

I shook my head. “No, just, think that might be a build up to sensation. The shock made it more painful.” I reasoned. 

“Alright, but just for my own personal edification…what are your words?” Sam asked me carefully. 

“Qui means quit and nien means caution.” I reviewed. Then I gasped as Noah’s tongue rasped against my non-iced nipple. 

“Good girl.” Sam verbally petted. Then he dragged the ice cube around the swell between the first and second ‘ropes’. 

“Ooooh.” I groaned as my body tried to arch in pleasure and back away from the cold at the very same time. 

Sam and Noah then spent the next amount of time immeasurable teasing me with differing sensations, the cold bite of icy fingers then the hot slide of a soft tongue. Tiny nips and hickeying sucks. They played and teased until tears of want slid down my temples and I was begging incoherently. I was so lost in my tempest of lust, want, need and feeling I completely missed the sound of a vibrator clicking on. The second it touched my pussy, right under my clit, I flew off like a rocket into the stratosphere of one of the strongest orgasms of my entire sexual life…and that was saying a lot. Just when I didn’t think it could get any better, Sam hit the immediate release on the nipple clamps. I couldn’t even scream as that pain made the pleasure even stronger. Then those beautiful bastards untied the ‘ropes’ and into the abyss I flew. 

Before I was able to think, Noah kissed me, drawing my attention from the ethereal plane to the feeling of him sinking deeply into me. “Fuck, Babygirl. Your hot little pussy is so fuckin’ tight. You feel so fuckin’ good. Gawddamn, I wanna fuck you for the rest of our lives.” My hips rose up to meet his every thrust until we were both moaning and chanting out the Lord’s name as we crested another wave of orgasmic pleasure. “Shit…You…fuck…love…you…” he groaned as each pulse and throb of his cock met and married with every clench and flutter of my pussy. 

As soon as Puck rolled to the side, Sammy took hold of my hips, turning me over and pulling them up until I came up on my knees. His hands slid under us to play with my swollen, throbbing breasts. In no time at all we’d found a rhythm that brought us to the greatest pleasure we knew. “Mercy Baby…I wanna come in your ass. I know we haven’t prepped you a lot…but please say I can shove my dick in your tight little asshole. Only place on God’s green earth that is tighter than your pretty little pussy. Please, Mercy…say I can take your hot little ass.” 

I nodded emphatically. “Please…Yeah…God…Sammy baby…yeah.” I babbled. 

Noah knew that when I was in the frame of mind that I held in that moment, I had less than no ability to reason what may or may not have been a good idea. So, he quickly moved to grab some lube and squeeze a substantial dollop onto my butthole which Sam had been staring at like a starving man as he’d begged so prettily for my consent. As soon as that was done, he shoved his head under where Sam and I were joined and tongued Sam’s balls down…rushing Sam to his inevitable cum. Sam took the hint and slipped out of my pussy…the deluge of pussy juice that came out with him would have been slightly embarrassing if I’d cared at all. “Oh, fuck yeah.” Noah growled before he fastened his mouth to my now empty pussy, his tongue doing an admirable job of filling what was lost as Sam roughly took my ass. 

I squealed out a sound unlike any I’d made before as I freaked out and orgasmed at the same time. I don’t even know if Sam came or not, I was that far into my own pleasure. I didn’t even come to until Puck dribbled cold water on my chest. When I blinked my way back to consciousness, they were both staring at me in concern. “You okay?” 

“Oh, I’m so far beyond okay…fuck that was amazing.” 

Both of them laughed and we dragged ourselves to the shower. We spent the rest of the day moving between the bed, the kitchen and the shower. Making love in various freaky deaky ways. Noah even let me use a vibrator on his ass while Sam and I sucked him off. It was cool, but he admitted that as much as he liked getting a double blow job while getting his ass reamed, “That vibe just didn’t feel as good as Sam’s cock.” Sam didn’t want to try that. Instead, he elected to fuck me while Noah fucked him. 

As much as I loved the Lord and enjoyed spending my Sunday mornings finding small churches to attend and give Him all praise and worship, that was one of the best Sunday’s I’d had on the entire tour. I felt ready to take on the world by the time we left our apartment on Monday morning. It was a damn good weekend even if it only lasted one day. 

Rockaway Beach (The Ramones)  
Puck Pov

The Sunday we spent in our Chicago condo was such a fucking awesome day, I relived it in my mind for weeks afterward. Thinking back, I was pretty sure that we never actually had dinner. That may have been why we changed the meeting spot from the hotel, to Lou Mitchell’s Diner a block or two away the next morning. We had pancakes…all the pancakes. They were so, so good. I was full on Badass and ordered the Belgium malted pecan and bacon waffles…two of those bitches. They came with fresh butter and some special syrup that were so good I almost cried. The diner’s special blend coffee was awesome too. I tasted Cede’s multigrain pancakes and they were good, and so were Sam’s fresh banana pancakes, but I won the best order of the day contest. 

Santana watched us eat for a minute and started laughing. “You three…did you eat anything but each other yesterday?” She teased. Probably we should have waited on everyone to get there before we ordered and started eating, but we were hungry.

Artie gave her the side eye. “Tana-Doll, you know I love you, but we both know that you, me and Brittany are about to order three fourths of this menu and eat all of it.” Yeah, he called her out and she answered by kissing the hell out of his ass until the waiter got there. They didn’t order three-quarters of the menu, but they did order a hell of a lot of food too. So yeah, Art-man was speaking the truth on Tana’s hypocrisy. It should also be noted that they didn’t wait on everyone to get there before they ordered either. The others all came in a few at a time. 

When Shelby and David got there, they didn’t arrive with just the two of them and Beth. Not only was Frannie Fabray with them, so were Saul, Mills and Nikki. I hopped up and had both my girls in my arms in seconds. The only feeling in the world that was better than boning Sam and Mercedes, better than being on stage in front of a packed stadium…was hugging my little girls and knowing that in that moment all was right with my world. Shels and Mills had even dressed them alike. They were both wearing black shoes with thick white soles that looked like a sneaker had mated with a ballet flat and created a hybrid with a big bow on the front just for them. Like their MeDe, they were wearing one of those romper things. Theirs were black and white with a white lace front vest over the rompers. And like Cede, they had decided not to bother changing at the park and were wearing their swimsuits under the rompers. Completely innocent, totally adorable plain black, Nike, racerback one pieces for my babies though. 

That made me look over at Sexy Mama, she was rocking a cute off the shoulder, gray and white striped romper that had a big bow around her waist and gathers around her shoulders. I’d mentally made fun of the puffy, three quarter length sleeves, but it looked sexy as hell on her. Under it she was rocking a black and white halter top one piece that was black up to her huge, sexy ass titties and then white over them. I couldn’t wait to see it wet. She was wearing a black halter sports bra under it, but that would, hopefully, be taken off before we hit Yankee Harbor. For walking around the park she had on a pair of white and black, Wanted petal wedge sneakers, but I knew she had a pair of simple, Sketcher, black wedge flip flops in her bag to wear in the water park area. 

While the woman and girls we loved were looking all fly and classy, me and Sammy Boy had gone for comfort over fashion. Sam was rocking a gray tee shirt that he called his ‘truth to power’ shirt. Emblazoned across his chest were some simple truths that everyone needed to acknowledge. It started with ‘Science is Real’, ‘Black Lives Matter, ‘No Human is Illegal’, ‘Love is Love’, ‘Women’s Rights are Human Rights’ and it finished with ‘Kindness is Everything’. Of course, Sam had ordered it just a bit too small…so it was looking fucking hot on him. He wore it with a pair of gray camo cargo shorts, soft as shit, gray Sketcher ankle socks and low-top black Converse sneakers. He’d ordered my tee shirt too. A vintage heather black tee that I’d ripped the sleeves off of, which read ‘Punch More Nazis’. Sam wasn’t exactly sure if that was a life goals shirt or it was a Captain America knockoff shirt. He wasn’t sure and I didn’t care. That was a sentiment I could stand behind. “But the guy who sells it said that a portion of his proceeds go to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, so I thought it was good either way.” 

It was very good either way. So, I wore it with pride and some used to be black cargo shorts and a pair of Sketcher Go-Gear flip-flops. They made me look like a total dude bro, but they were comfortable as hell and I didn’t want to have to carry around extra shoes and shit. I was already carrying a backpack with my trunks, a towel, three of our big ass Six Flags refillable cups and the two, count them two, twa-twa sunscreens that Cede, Trina and Bubbie insisted we use religiously. The Supergoop! Super Power sunscreen mousse broad spectrum SPF fifty was for our regular skin but the Eau Thermale Avène hydrating sunscreen balm SPF fifty plus was for our noses, lips, eyes and ears. I may have complained but I knew that Cede used a third one just for her face so…I decided to shut up before she added that one too. Besides, I might have been a serious badass…but I wasn’t stupid…cancer wasn’t anything to fuck with. Sam had a backpack with his shit, sunscreen and the other two refillable cups we’d bought in Virginia and Georgia and took whenever we went to one of the parks. 

We actually got off pretty easy. Cede’s bag was pretty ridic. It wasn’t so bad at the beginning of the day. At breakfast the big ass purple nylon tote bag only contained her wallet, her sunscreens, a hair brush, wide tooth comb, pick, a scarf to match her outfit, her personal iPhone and one of the thin books she was reading for her classes. Though why she’d stuck one in that day I couldn’t say. She had finished all her reading journals and essays by that point. I’d noticed that she had, like me, probably without conscious thought, put in the red plaid and blue plaid purses that we’d gotten for Nikki and Beth to carry small amounts of money so they wouldn’t have to ask every time they saw a souvenir they wanted. Personally, for me it wasn’t about the whole asking thing, it taught them to look at cash and know, I’ve got this much money. Then they had ask themselves if the trinket was actually worth the cost. That was the most important part of giving them the cash. And it was a lesson that it was never too early to start to learn. 

We let Shelby and David and Saul and Mills eat in peace. We took care of ordering for and making sure Beth and Niks ate a good breakfast. Saul and Mills had brought Nikki because Bubbie was saving up some time to get all the grand kids and meet the tour that last week before they had to go back to school. The parents would have them on the road with us for the two weeks following our Ohio dates…so our younger sibs would be on the road with us for three full weeks. They were so going to get sick of our shows. The whole family was still waiting on an announcement from Saul and Mills, just looking at her face there was not a doubt in my mind that Mills was totally pregnant. But maybe they were waiting until after the first trimester was over to tell anybody. I just hoped that she was as far along as I thought she was, the waiting was killing all of us. And Francesca would totally kill Mills if she was hugely pregnant at her wedding. But I was pretty sure that Mills had to be near the end of her third month…so it should be all good. 

Everyone, our Original New Directions peeps, our Crew, our tour crew, the Rangemen and the various and sundry family members associated there with, was all assembled, fed, watered and into the fleet of fifteen passenger vans that Hudson had arranged for us by nine. The Rangemen drove the rented vehicles and probably shaved some time off the hour and half long trip…because we made it there just after ten. The park didn’t open for another half hour, but we did get a good parking spot so the walk to the gate was short. I was a little surprised that they went ahead and let us go in. We went to the courtyard at the center of the entrance area to work out the logistics. There was a total of eleven Rangemen present, King Roger, had elected to stay behind with the vehicles. The big, mean looking, Rangeman hated heights and roller coasters and crowds and pretty much every part of amusement parks. However, we could all agree that there was no need for them all the trail us all day. Manny and Zip were the primaries on Nikki and Beth and Junior and Binkie, technically, had seniority on our security detail, so they had first dibs and the four of them decided to split the day with Manny and Zip taking the morning and Binkie and Junior electing to handle the after-lunch duties. We all agreed that we were going to have dinner together, but everyone was on their own for lunch. Binkie and Junior told our clique to meet them at the Go Fresh Café Orleans in Orleans Place at two for lunch and the hand-off from Manny and Zip. 

I couldn’t help but be amused by the Rangemen’s hot summer day uniforms. Darcy in the Rangeman rebrand had pretty much planned for every possible contingency…at least all the ones they’d probably encounter while guarding our asses. Even though all of them weren’t actually on duty, they all wore their uniform. Darcy had done them right, they looked like a unit, but not out of place, in their black tank tees with the new Rangeman Logo above their hearts, black cargo shorts that seemed sturdier than mine or Sam’s or any of the regular guys’. The shorts also had the logo on both the back pocket and the right thigh cargo pocket. I noticed that they had on black hiking boots and taller, black, versions of the same soft ass socks Bubbie had introduced me and Sammy Boy to. I was pretty sure that they were each packing no less than two guns, four knives and a taser or two…and probably a few things I didn’t even consider weapons but they could totally kill a fool with. 

When the group broke down, our group was still big as hell. The band and dancers went one way, the tour crew broke into smaller groups. Tessa and Joe went off to explore the park together, though Saul and Sam both asked them to meet up with us for lunch, just to check in. Sugar and John went with them. Finn and Lauren had brought LaKeith with them. So, he and Dave headed off to do couply stuff, which meant that Azimio decided to roll with us. Vince rolled with us. I was kind of starting to feel bad for the guy. It must suck to be around couples all the damn time and not be able to find your one…or two as the case may be. Anyway, Saul and Mills decided to stick with us too. Probably because Shelby and the girls would give Millsy cover for what I was sure she considered to be her secret. She could easily sit out of roller coasters to keep Shelby company or to make sure that she has help with the girls if she needed it. 

Not that she needed it. no matter what ride we went on, how far we walked, whatever, Neither Beth nor Nikki spend so much as a full two minutes on their own feet. Finn was constantly stealing ‘Drizzle’. Now that Beth was older, she’d been told an age appropriate explanation of why Finn’s nickname for her was so different from everyone else’s. Probably it helped her to understand why Finn and Lauren spoiled her ‘something awful’ at least according to Sam. It was kind of true…but it also wasn’t just Finn and Lauren. Between me, Sam, James, Finn, David and Saul…Bethany and Nikolette were treated like total Princesses all day. They rode shoulders, they got snacks and they got water and Dippin’ Dots and other things they probably shouldn’t have had before lunch. It didn’t matter who was buying they both got, because none of us, not their parents, not their Framily-aunts and uncles, not even the Rangemen, cough-Manny-cough brought for one of the girls and not the other. Cede’s big ass purple bag didn’t have a prayer. By the time we were scheduled to meet up with Binkie and Junior, it was full as were me and Sam’s backpacks. We finally just gave up, rented a stroller…Beth was young enough that we, technically, could…even if we only used it to carry all the shit we’d bought the kids, and ourselves and each other. Sam and Cede both loved all the Justice League merch and Bugs Bunny was totally badass. Plus, Beth couldn’t go home with all that stuff and we not send stuff back to Amara, Amaea, Robyn and Sloane. And if we send back to them, then we had to get stuff for Jake, Triple S and that had to be expanded to include M&M and Jazzy so yeah, we had a metric shit ton of stuff. 

But even with the shopping, and some stopping to take requested pictures and sign requested autographs, we also rode ever single ride we wanted to ride. Some of them more than once. Niks and Beth rode every kiddie ride too. The Flash Passes were worth their weight in gold. At lunch, I sent Gwen a text asking her to give Hudson a bonus for her good work. After a healthy lunch, damn Rangemen, we headed to Yankee Harbor and played there until it closed at seven. Thankfully, none of the rides in the water park area had very tall height requirements. Once we’d done all eleven of the water-thrill rides, we spent the rest of the time playing and having a fucking blast in Hurricane Bay…a massive wave pool. When the water park closed we used their facilities to shower and get dressed again in our real clothes, before we returned to the main part of the park to enjoy some of their entertainment features. We had dinner all together as a big ass group at this great Mexican restaurant about twenty minutes from the theme park that Justin recommended. It was where his parents always ate after a day at the theme park. I fully understood why, the Three Amigos enchiladas were awesome. 

The ride back to Chicago was so much quieter than the ride up. We had to help get Niks and Beth up to their hotel room and washed for real and into bed. Then we went back to our apartment with our original crew. That was a dumbass idea. Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty epic. Everyone had swung through their hotel rooms and gotten their lounging clothes, even BabyMamaDrama and her Big Black Boo Thang who were staying at a much ritzier place than we’d put everyone else up in. Quinn was going to figure out his plan if he wasn’t careful. After we’d all assembled in the lobby, we’d hit the corner store and glommed all the snacks, so the party was pretty awesome. Though it was less of a party and more of a Netflix and Chill the way parents thought it was supposed to go, but fuck it was nice chilling out with the folks who knew us best. Within two hours after we got to our love shack, there were fifteen of us, the thirteen first time in a long time National Championship NDs, minus Rachet’s bat-shit ass, and James and Vince, all chilling around our living room. We had a pretty epic time too. Probably it would have been less embarrassing all around if we’d left the beer, wine and most importantly the tequila at the store. It definitely would have been less embarrassing if we’d, okay, I’d remembered to close the ‘toy chest’. 

“You three are some kinky mofos.” Santana crowed as she came out of the bedroom swinging the nipple clamps that had made Cede pass the hell out earlier around her extended pointer. She’d also found my vibrating cock ring and one of our paddles. So, she hadn’t gone too deep that stuff was all in the hang shit up part of the wardrobe-armoire thingy that was our love shack’s toy chest.

“And you’re a nosy bitch.” I growled before stalking, drunkenly, over to grab our shit and put it back. 

“And you know this man.” She stretched out the last word comically. 

Then here came BabyMamaDrama with Sexy Mama’s purple We-Vibe. “This thing…what is it even?” she held it up high for all to see. 

“Oh, it’s a We-Vibe, you use it on the clit and against the G-Spot during intercourse…that is a mind blower.” Tina giggled and made the exploding mind hand gesture. 

Lauren laughed and gave her a pound. “Damn, Stutter, it’s always the quiet ones, huh?” she teased. 

Vince shook his head. “Elle, you know you and Finn aren’t quiet and everyone up in here knows it don’t get no freakier than the two of you.” 

Finn threw a decorative pillow at him. “Shut up, Vinnie…you’re just butt hurt because your last chick turned out to be uber-prudish.” 

Vince laughed and nodded. “Yeah. She know she was wrong for that shit too. She dressed more like a stripper than any chick I’ve ever seen not working a pole and then she wouldn’t do anything good.” 

Cede picked her head up off of Sam’s lap. “So, umm, she can dress however she wants. It’s her body. How she dresses is not determinative of who she actually is as a person. Now that we’ve got the public service announcement out of the way…What do you mean she wouldn’t do anything good? I may have had Darcy help me check out ole girl’s Facebook page, this is a no slut shaming zone or whatever…but come on, what ever happened to truth in advertisement?” 

Vince held up a finger, “We’re gonna come back to why y’all be Facebook stalking my dates in a minute. As for what I meant…she didn’t suck dick, but she was fine with me eating her out…expected it really. She didn’t do doggy style…but she also didn’t do missionary because it might have messed up her hair. Oh, and did I mention that when she rode me, and she got hers she acted like we were done for the night. It was seriously just that bad.”

We all exchanged looks. There was no way in hell anyone wanted to be the one to say shit on that one. But then again, I was always the one to say what everyone was thinking when the rest of them were too polite or what the fuck ever. “Man, how the fuck did you date her for a whole month?” 

Vince shrugged. “I wanted to see if that shit got better when she was more comfortable with me.” 

“I get it. You figured she might try to play the good girl at first, but be a freak in the sheets if she thought you were all in. Gotcha.” I nodded. 

“Xactly.” Vince nodded looking drunk-wise. “But she just sucked…in the worst possible way.” 

Everyone started laughing at that then there was more conversation accompanied by more alcohol and the next thing I knew it was morning. Hangovers were officially the worst. But we soon found out that there were worse things than hangovers…even worse than hangovers on concert days. As everyone was getting up and trying to get rehydrated, take some pain killers and shit when someone decided to turn on the television. “In Celebrity News, last night, music super-group KAMA had a night in with their friends and have accidentally reminded us all that they are still college students in the best possible way. Residents in the building that houses their Chicago condo were treated to singing telegrams early this morning. One of the residents, Alex Wubbels, posted a video of the three am serenade.” Yeah, there we were in our lounging clothes and it was easy to tell that Cede was unrestrained in her oversized black tank that read ‘I Don’t Run. And if you ever see me running, you should start running too, because probably something is chasing me’. I was to her left with Sam on her right and the rest of our crew all arrayed behind us. Even drunk, we were really fucking good as we serenaded the poor woman we’d woken up with Bon Jovi’s ‘It’s My Life’, complete with Jersey compliant dance moves. The news people interviewed Ms. Wubbles, too. “Of course, I wasn’t mad about it. I’ve been trying for days to win tickets to their concert and boom, they came to my door and sang for me. That was not a bad thing in any shape, form, or faction. I was just coming off a twelve-hour shift at University of Chicago Hospital. It was a crap night and that visit allowed me to go to bed with a smile on my face.” 

The news went back to the anchors. One of them looked at the other and chuckled. “How is it that even when they are clearly very much inebriated, they can all sing better than I can at my best?” The White guys asked his co-anchor.

“They were all in a national championship show choir…for the most part…and three of them are world famous singers. And you do sound like a dying moose when you try and sing.” His buddy, a Latino man, joked. “The group of friends managed to serenade at least two apartments on every floor of the Chicago condo building. However, singing telegrams weren’t the group’s only drunken escapades.” He smirked. “Several donations to local charities were made not so anonymously.” 

There was audio of my voice on a voicemail leaving the contact information for Gwen Abrams, “Shush. Shut up, we’re supposed to be doing this on the down low.” I was clearly not talking into the phone and yet, I was completely understandable…even drunk off my ass. “Yeah, we want to help and we can, but I’m way too BEEP up to remember how much we gave you, so just send her the specifics for our taxes, yeah?” 

“Noah, you have to say please.” Sam chided in a loud, drunken whisper.

Cede chimed in too. “Yeah and thank you.” 

“Please and thank you.” My voice returned. “Now, I was a good boy why don’t you come over here and let me feel those soft ass lips.” Thankfully, the call ended there. Hell even I couldn’t tell which of my lovers I’d been talking to. 

“That call was made to Special Olympics of Chicago. Other organizations to received additional donations from KAMA and their friends included the Ronald McDonald Charities, Open Books, and Bridge to Success.” The White guy finished. 

The Latino closed off the segment with some more banter. “You might feel like you’re failing as a singer against Drunk KAMA, I think I fail as a human compared to Drunk KAMA and their friends. I’ve not given to five organizations in one night since Christmas.”

“Me neither, Juan, me neither.” They moved on after that. 

Cede, Sam and I grabbed our phone to see how pissed off Daniel and Darcy were with us. Thankfully, neither of them were too mad. But Darcy did have a tidbit of information that we desperately needed. “In case you were too drunk to remember, you also made a promise on social media that your former choirmates would perform you with for your encore tonight. People are talking about it everywhere.” She texted. “I guess Kurt has a lot to do this morning. They’re going to need to practice with you guys this afternoon.” 

“Aw fuck me backwards with an elephant dong.” Sam cursed vehemently as he read the message. While our language wasn’t exactly the same, me and Cede both cosigned the sentiment. 

“What’s wrong?” James was the first to ask.

“We may have…in our totally fucked up state…promised the fans that you guys were going to join us on stage for part of the show.” I told them quickly, like ripping off a band aid. 

Kurt shook his head in denial. “But they-we don’t have stage apparel or gear or anything.” 

“Kurt, maybe you could work a miracle. I mean, you worked with Bubbie and Ms. Wilthorne, you can find them something that would work with what we’re already wearing. It can be straight off the rack and everything.” Cede said sweetly. “I know you can make this work. You’re our fashion guru.” Thank Yeshiva that small amount of flattery was pretty much all it took to convince him. 

Kurt around and noticed the looks of pleading on our friends faces. “Fine, but I need everyone’s current sizes…and Quinn and Lauren as my assistants.”

James looked up. “Me and Peaches have dinner reservations at Grace for six.” 

Kurt was in the know on the whole surprise proposal thing, which may have been why he asked for BabyMamaDrama for his helper…keep her from getting underfoot during our post-sound check timeline run through. “I’ll make it work.” He promised his former Dalton brother. 

From there things devolved into all of us running around like chickens with our heads cut off. We managed to get everyone Ubers back to the two different hotels. James and his ‘Peaches’ weren’t staying with the rest of the crew. He’d already made his arrangements before we decided to make things huge for him and Quinn. Once that was done we showered and made a bank run. Then we stopped by CVS and got apology cards and slipped all our neighbors cards with a Bill inside apologizing for our drunken escapades the night before. I couldn’t tell who was happier that we lived in a small building, me or Sam. We ran a truncated schedule, shortening our workout time and only giving our parent twenty minutes to bust our chops about the drunken partying. I was just glad the others had talked me and Santana out of hitting a club. Who knew what shit would have gone down if we’d gotten toasted in public. 

The latter half of the night was a big ass blur. But one thing Sam, Cede and I remembered from the night before was that James and Quinn had closed on that house they were getting near Yale. So, we decided to give them some money for furniture as their engagement gift. We’d been trying to figure out how we could help them with making the place a haven for them after classes and stock it with stuff that would last until they had made their money back in rent and everything. Personally, I’d have just handed them a check and let them decide on their own why we were giving it to them…but Cede said we should make sure not to hurt their pride. That comment made me and Sam smirk to each other. James had managed to do something that Russell and Judith, Sue, me, him, Cede and even Moms D and Hell Bent had not been able to do. Somehow, some way, he had taught Quinn to respect herself. I wanted to trick out their house just to reward his ass for performing that miracle. 

Sound check and the timeline run through were accomplished before Kurt and the girls showed up at the venue. It was quickly decided that our friends would join the background singers so they would have to learn less choreography. After half an hour watching Finn try to get the moves Dave raised a hand. “Hey, Finn, you’re their drummer friend? The one that gave you the licks I needed to be able to hit to get picked up? Let’s let him use my extra kit…because Dude, I’m sorry but ain’t no way you’re gonna learn those steps tonight.” Finnocence almost wept in joy that he could just rock out on the drums rather than trying to dance. It worked too. In less than thirty minutes, Finn and Dave were golden. They had worked their shit out and by the end of practice everything was smooth sailing. We were good for all of our songs, and the love songs we were covering, including BabyMamaDrama’s favorite song…that one was super important. 

Quinn and James headed back to their hotel to shower and get changed for their dinner. The rest of us all ate the delicious and healthy fare our promoter made sure was available at the United Center. It was a great show. Alessia had added some drama and movement to her act. She had seriously come up and I was sure that in a year or two, her name would be as big as ours. Cassidy’s sets were on point too. All in all, Chicago was one of the best nights of the entire tour. It was just a little more special because we got to take the stage with our peeps. James’s surprise had gone off without a single hitch. I was happy and my friends and family were doing great, what more could any man desire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the posting delay. I live in the Metro Atlanta area and there were some issues with power outages thanks to Irma. But even more than that, I was born and raised in Coastal GA, just up from Jacksonville, FL. I had SEVERAL of my family members staying with me to escape the storm. My place was a mad house.  
> As such I was not able to keep up with my normal posting schedule. Or, to be honest, my normal writing schedule.  
> Everything is okay now, both here and back home, but I will need to ask your patience as I try and get the next chapter typed up and over to DaughterofDarkenss87 for beta reading. I hope to be back to regular weekly postings by the beginning of October. 
> 
> For my social commentary this chapter, I would like to thank the workers of Georgia Power and Southern Company as well as the workers of Okefenokee Rural Electric Membership Corporation. These linemen and other support workers worked tirelessly to get the power back on to over six million people in Georgia and countless others in Florida. Having the comfort of electricity is very important for the elderly...as was shown in Florida, they cannot live without it. So while there were more than a few people complaining about how long it took you to restore power to them because you prioritized those with the greatest need...I am grateful. Thank you. 
> 
> To those putzes who felt that being forced to charge their phones in their car was offensive...please take my advice and grow the fuck up. If you had to charge your phone in your car for an extra day or two so that people who cannot live without medications that need refrigeration, who cannot survive without AC in 90 degree temperatures were restored to service...trust me as the daughter and niece of people who fall into that later category...it was totally & completely worth it. 
> 
> To those celebrities who gave their time and money to the HandinHand Hurricane Relief telethon...I doubt that you'll ever see this, but thank you. 
> 
> To all my readers...Thank you for your patience. Please leave me a comment to let me know how you like the chapter.  
> TTFN,  
> Anni


	11. Colour of My Love (Celine Dion)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quinn's Post-Sophomore Summer  
> (It was supposed to be her and a couple of other people this chapter...but she had quite a tale to tell.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to comment on any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.  
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her awesome Beta reading.  
> THANKS to Amber Riley & Chord Overstreet for their portrayal of some of my favorite character ever.   
> THANKS to the Men of the MCU for giving me all the various eye candy from Robert Downey, Jr all the way to Chadwick Boseman, but not Tom Holland...Him's a cute kid but a kid still.

Chapter 11

Colour of My Love (Celine Dion)  
Quinn PoV

I had to admit, my sophomore year of college held far more learning experiences than my class time would suggest. I’d never considered myself to be sheltered, but South by Southwest had showed me how naive I really was, even more than meeting all of James’ friends from Cleveland. I’d rebelled for a short time and dyed my hair pink, but I’d done it with Kool-aid to make sure that it wasn’t permanent. At the…music festival…that seemed too limiting for what I’d experienced that week, everywhere I’d looked there was new music, new food, new people, new technology, new everything. I talked to people who had vastly different experiences than I had or those of James or MeDe or anyone I knew, really. I was sure that it was good for me. The thing was, when I got back to Yale, I realized that our group had become so insular, that I’d missed all the culturally, physically, spiritually and emotionally different people that surrounded me on campus. James and I made a conscious effort to go to some other clubs and try and meet some different people.

One of the first meetings I went to was the campus Young Republicans meeting. I’d always considered myself to be a republican, my parents were. My grandparents had been. It was just who we were. Fabrays were Republicans. My Grandmere was related to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Other than President Obama, I’d voted for Republicans down the ticket the one time I’d voted. That first meeting I attended was the only meeting I went to. The Fabrays might have been Republicans. My Grandmother might have been related to a long deceased Republican president. But Lucille Quinn Fabray was definitely not a republican. I couldn’t even begin to believe the crap that had come out of their mouths during the meeting. They felt that gay marriage was wrong and should never have been legalized, their feelings on Trans people didn’t even bear consideration. Disgustingly enough, Biff McIntosh and his roommate Wyler Pierce were nodding along like they weren’t still fucking each other through their bed every night …at least according to Vince’s sources, which were impeccable. That was strike one. Then someone decried the benefits of free well woman visits and basically women having control of their bodies and health care and finances and basically anything at all and not only did no one disagree, several people agreed with that idiot’s old trifling ass. That was most definitely Strike Two. I didn’t actually stay for Strike Three. I finally stood up and looked around. “Sorry, but I’m just going to go now. I didn’t realize that to be a Republican, I had to hate people like my friends Kurt and Blaine, who deserve all the happiness marriage can bring them. Because they understand that marriage is a commitment of honor and fidelity and not just a piece of paper or a business deal. Or my friend Unique who deals with enough bullshit by nine AM that would it send any of you, weak ass, punk bitches into therapy after just a few days of dealing with it all. And considering that I am a female…an adult woman not a child who needs one of you genetically defunct asshats to tell her how to live, breathe, take care of myself, my body, my education or a various host of other decisions…I’m going to leave before I decide to make you all cry like the whiney little snowflakes you like to call everyone else.” Suffice it to say, that was the only meeting of the ‘Young Republicans’ I attended.

James talked me into going with Taylor and Topanga to the Mock Trial Association. And all of us who were not completely science brained, joined the Debate Team. Kat joined the Undergraduate Women in Science at Yale club. It met at the same time as the Debate Team and it gave her something to pad her resumé. If anyone thought it was weird that we started attending meetings, even for competition based clubs, in the middle of a spring semester, no one said anything. We tried a whole bunch of different clubs and groups but we eventually settled on just a few each. I kept the MTA, the Debate Team and the non-competitive glee club. I shared all three of those with Taylor, but Topanga didn’t sing, so she was only in the first two with us. Taylor had Model UN and she convinced Victor to join her going to those meetings. Harrison, Taylor and James attended the Black Student Alliance at Yale together. I joined them for the Afro-American Cultural Center meetings. Pretty much all of us found some place where we could go and interact with people outside our immediate social circle. We even dragged our shier friends into the game. Brad and Max found a group of science bros. Drew made us all join an organized running club. It was co-ed and more about health rather than racing or competition. We’d been doing a smaller version on our own, so it wasn’t a big deal. Even before Taylor dragged him to Model UN, Victor was in pretty much all the political -slash- government clubs, and surprisingly enough the Dramatic Association, though I guess that acting ability was a necessity for a spy.

That had become a running joke among us. Taylor was going to be president. Topanga would be her attorney general. Victor was going to lead the intelligence community…that or he was going to be the iron fist inside her velvet glove…yeah, that double entréndre was totally intended. When Taylor broke up with her high school boyfriend, she and Victor started getting closer. But he never asked her out, probably because Victor saw Taylor as his pedestal chick. I’d noticed that as they had become really good friends, Vic looked at Tay much like Puck had viewed MeDe for a long time when we were younger. Hopefully when she broke up with that guy she was seeing from Dartmouth, those two would get their heads on straight. They would make a great couple. Both of them had a deep sense of honor, a drive and ambition that would augment and support each other. Besides, their kids would be seriously cute and ridiculously smart.

James and I dated every Friday night and our group of friends hung out together every Sunday. Saturday tended to be spent working on papers, projects or other assignments. We had moved beyond two groups of roommates, the previous year. By that spring, we were as solid as the New Directions were. I came to truly understand what Mama Dani had meant when she told me, “Quinny-Girl, Love is the only thing in life that is a completely, wholly renewable resource. The more you give, the more you have to give.” We were a family of choice. Often, one of my sisters would run interference when Judith called. They told her that I was in the shower. They made up an evening class. Finally, Topanga pointedly asked her if she realized that she was violating the terms of her release by contacting me without my express written consent. That bought me a whole three weeks of blessed silence.

Unfortunately, that just meant that Judith started calling me as soon as school was over. Literally, I was in my car driving to the hotel James and I were staying in overnight after the ten of us had taken all of our things to our storage unit we rented that summer when she called me. I didn’t answer. James and I had given ourselves thirty-six hours before we had to make our way back to our homes. We spent almost that entire time making love. There was something perfect about waking up in James’ arms. It made me feel safe and loved and content in a way I still couldn’t seem to get used to. And the orgasms. I had had an orgasm before…but even the smallest ones I reached with James made any not created with him pale in comparison. By the time we headed back to Ohio, I’d stockpiled enough pleasure to get me through at least the first two weeks of the summer.

James and I were both working during the summer, as usual. It was okay though because I still found my internship to be amazingly enriching. The summer after my freshman year, I’d worked with Attorney Patterson’s team. His focus was all business contracts, will, probate…somewhat dry law. His partner, Attorney Roger Estes, he focused on civil litigation. I had helped with research for Mr. Patterson that had been used in one of his contract arbitrations. But working on litigation was an entirely different animal. I loved it. During my second week, I found out about Mr. Estes had a practice of taking an intern with him and his paralegal to court…a different intern for every case. “I know more than one person who made it all the way through law school without ever seeing the inside of a courtroom. They never realized that the career they were working towards wasn’t right for them. I decided to catch my interns early…make sure they knew what they were getting into while they still had plenty of time to correct their course. If you see what litigation is and you realize that it isn’t the right fit for you…change your major, head to med school. Go to New York and take on Wall Street. Head to Silicon Valley and become a venture capitalist…don’t let yourself get trapped in something that makes you miserable just because that is what your degree is in or because you spent too much to get a degree not to use it.” he told us all wisely.

I lucked out and was the first one picked to go with Mr. Estes and his paralegal, a pretty Hispanic lady a little older than Santana’s mom named Jania. A few of the other interns were envious, but it was so their own faults. They apparently couldn’t grasp the concept of business casual, so how could he trust them to dress appropriately for court. And don’t let me get started on their complete disregard for punctuality. Not to mention that one of the actual law student interns had been complaining since day one about the fact that he was actually expected to do real work. His internship the previous summer had mostly consisted of golfing with his godfather and it was a paid internship at that. Then again, Lawrence Edward Calloway, Junior, was also Francine’s ex-Russell and Judith approved-boyfriend…and pretty much the poster boy for White Male Privilege. As much as I loved every second of time I got to spend with Beth, Eddie was definitely making me wish I’d applied for an internship in the governor’s office like Topanga and Taylor both had in their home states.

The case I was awarded the privilege of attending and assisting on was almost perfect for me. Mr. Estes client, Frank, was suing Burt Hummel’s biggest local competitor. He’d gotten his brakes done at Nick’s Auto Shop. He’d been told that he needed new calipers in addition to the rotors, drums and pads. Frank had paid over eleven hundred bucks and lost his car overnight while the work was done. Three days after he had gotten his car back, he’d caused an accident on his way to Dayton, because his calipers locked down. His car had been towed to a Midas only for Frank to find out that none of the work he’d paid for had been done. So, Frank was suing Nick’s for his money back and the cost of repairs to his car and the car of the person he’d hit, oh and their medical bills of both parties. He was also suing for court costs and pain and suffering too.

Within two hours of the session being called to order, I knew that I was definitely in the right major and on the right career path. It was incredible, watching Mr. Estes take the owner of Nick’s apart on that stand. It was actually kind of similar to the way Santana and I used to take apart lesser Cheerios when they ceased to amuse us and just became annoying. He never raised his voice. He never even seemed belligerent. He seemed charming and affable. I was certain that at one point the witness forgot that Mr. Estes was the lawyer for the plaintiff. I was surprised how quickly the trial progressed. Mr. Estes called the mechanics from Midas, the police and first responders and put in a whole bunch of depositions, then he cross examined the owner of Nick’s and the two managers that the defense called…then it went to the judge to make a decision. He found in favor of the plaintiff and Frank got everything he wanted, but he didn’t get much in the way of pain and suffering. Finn and Lauren had each gotten a lot more. However, Mr. Estes’ fees were included in the judgement awarded to Frank, so everyone was all very pleased. None more than Mr. Estes. On the way back to the office, Jania explained. “When court costs and lawyer fees are included in the judgement awarded by judge…not a jury…the fees are more automatic. Because Lee charges on a sliding scale based on what the client can afford, he wasn’t going to make much on this case. However, the judge just guaranteed that he will make his highest per hour billable fee. Instead of making seventy-five a billable hour, which was what he was set to charge Mr. Mathers, Lee is going to make two-twenty-five per hour instead.”

Mr. Estes laughed. “That’s right, so when you pass the bar wherever you’re going to practice and you register with the courts, go high with your fees. You can always give people breaks if they need them in office. Unless you’re with a firm…in which case your fees are going to have to be high enough for you to make enough money from your billable hours not just so you can cover your salary and your overhead, but also to create profit for your firm. It’s a good idea to start in a firm if you can. It’s good entry level experience.”

He took us to dinner to celebrate the win and do a breakdown of what had happened and what I’d learned. He asked me about any previous courtroom experience I’d had…what real life court cases I’d witnessed. I told him about MeDe’s assault case and my mother’s child support fraud case. I told him what I knew of Finn and Lauren’s case. I hadn’t been able to get there in person, but I’d received nightly updates from both MeDe and Tana, so I knew most of what had happened.

“Antwan Berry could have been one of the best litigators in the country, if he wanted to.” Mr. Estes smirked. “He just doesn’t have it in him to really sink his teeth into cases he doesn’t care about…the ones that don’t light a fire in him. That’s why he does so much family law…those cases always get his back up. And I don’t know Harris personally, but his reputation is pretty well known in the Midwest.”

Over the course of the rest of the summer, I had a wonderful experience. I did get roped into helping them with their International Picnic Day picnic. I may have…kind of…taken it over and just did it myself. The woman who usually planned it had become a grandmother at the start of the summer. Technically, she’d done most of the planning. I was more of a party coordinator, I made sure that everything was set up correctly and that the day ran smoothly. It went absolutely perfectly until I noticed that Papa Benton and Daddy were talking. I almost ran over to run interference.

“I’m not going to lie. I did mention it just to rub your old money, WASP schnoze in the info. Maybe if you’d been a better father it would have been you he visited.” Daddy said something under his breath, or at least too low for me to hear. Papa Benton shook his head. “You can call yourself her Daddy all you want. Hell, from the stories that she told me, you used to be a damn good daddy…kind of made me hate you more. But Quinnie and Frannie swear that you’ve made full amends and that they have forgiven you. But they also say that they will know for sure that you’re really, truly…completely sorry when you’ve spent enough for them to be sure.”

Daddy sighed. “I’ve been wracking my brain to figure out what will be enough. I even considered buying Frannie that Porsche she’s wanted for ever. But I don’t want her to kill herself, and she would she drives like she is the reincarnation of Dale Earnhardt.”

“Try driving somewhere with my son-in-law.” Benton Jones grumbled. Daddy asked which son-in-law. “The father of your first grandchild.”

“Oh God…her adoptive parents need to know that they must never let her drive. Not if she gets a lead foot from both sides of her genetics…” Daddy actually sounded worried.

“I’ll make sure that Que lets them know that Bethany has a predilection for speed.” Benton said with a wicked grin. It was something that Shelby and David had already figured out. None of us had realized that that the twelve-volt battery operated, Star Wars Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder could go that fast. Sam had thought that was the perfect birthday gift for his Pumpkin. The only one of the babies who would ride in it with her was Sloane. Amara, Amaea and Robyn avoided that treat like the plague.

“Bethany…after the city in Judea. A biblical name?” Daddy asked quietly. “Have you seen her? Is she as beautiful as Quinn was as a baby?”

“Well, a Talmudic name…Noah picked it.” Papa Benton told him. “I saw her the day she was born.” He said truthfully, carefully omitting the entire truth. “She was a beautiful little thing with thick brown hair and a pair of lungs that rivaled MeDe’s the day she came into the world. She had one hell of a grip too.”

“All Fabray women do…the men learn to hold things tightly, the women in the family come into the world tight fisted.” Daddy said proudly. “Frannie was the same and Lucy-Quinn-she almost broke my finger.”

Benton smiled a little arrogantly. “I’ve seen the girls at an after-Christmas sale…I firmly believe you.”

“You got Frannie to go to a sale?” Daddy sounded shocked.

I decided that it was time for me to stop eavesdropping and make my presence known. “Mama Dani and MeDe are good influences.” I said with a smile. I gave both men hugs, though the one I gave my biological father was still pretty stilted and tense. “Last year, Frannie managed to get a pair of Jimmy Choos for half off.” I bragged.

We actually had a pretty nice and completely cordial conversation for a few minutes before we all adjourned to go mingle. It was strange and almost unsettling. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had definitely missed something in the beginning of their conversation. The rest of the event went off with absolutely no hitches. We didn’t even run out of ice too early and had enough bottled water for everyone. The following morning, Mr. Patterson and Mr. Estes called me into the conference room. “Well, Ms. Fabray…if you do decide not to go into law, which, I truly believe would be a damn shame, you could be one hell of a success as an event planner.” Mr. Estes joked.

Mr. Patterson agreed with a smile of his own. “Now, when I was speaking with your father, he reminded me that you and your partners at Yale will be closing on your new school domicile later this month. To thank you for all your hard work, we’d like to help you with decorating your rooms.” he handed me an envelope containing a thousand-dollar e-gift card to Wayfair.

“I…Thank you both.” I managed to stammer out gratefully. “I…this is very much appreciated.”

Mr. Estes smiled broadly. “You’ve done a good job here these last two summers and you have yet to punch Calloway, even if the entire paralegal pool is betting on when your patience runs out.”

I was pretty proud of myself for the fact that I never did physically snap on that asshat. Two weeks later after we completed the closing process, I found myself wishing that I had gotten in on the betting. We could definitely have used the money. All of us were considered incredibly intelligent and yet not one of us had not considered that it would fall to us to get the furniture for the house until we had left the closing and were eating a celebratory pizza dinner at Kat’s pizzeria. It was very easy to get Daddy to contribute some money to helping us get things for the house. I told James and our roommates about the fifteen thousand that he gave me for the public areas. I wasn’t surprised that he gave me a matching amount to furnish and decorate James and my bedroom…the master suite. I was really, really happy that our friends gave us the biggest bedroom. I was really, really surprised when, a week after I got back to Lima, I got a call from Jim, our real estate agent in New Haven.

“Quinn, I spoke with Katherine and she told me give you a call. You know how there was the stipulation that the Meyers would refurbish the basement before you guys took possession of the house in August?” He said as soon as we exchanged the common courtesies.

“Yes, we asked that they take twenty grand off the purchase price if we had to do it ourselves.” I said thoughtfully.

“Exactly, well, the father’s start date was moved forward. They need to be in Miami in two weeks. They are willing to turn over the twenty-five thousand they had set aside for the refurnishing to your crew to handle things. Katherine said that you would be the best person to handle this matter.” Jim Jeffers said cautiously.

“Can you transfer the funds into a dedicated account and get me the name of a good general contractor in the area?” I asked quickly thinking on my feet.

“The first has already been accomplished. I will send you a list of my preferred vendors.”

I stopped. I wasn’t sure why that bothered me. “Thank you…I have a very good friend who was an architect and general contractor in Manhattan, he will look over the list you send me and verify that they are the pest people for each of the positions.”

So that was exactly what was done. When I got the email from Jim, I passed the list along to George and he got in touch with some people he knew who did the kinds of work we needed done. They all said the same thing. Jim Jeffers’ list contained the crème de la crème, but they weren’t the best. They were the people who made a ton of money doing luxury remodels, but they were pretty well known for overcharging on their labor costs and cutting corners on their materials. In fact, with a little research, I was able to find out that one of them had been the plumber that the people who had owned the house before the Meyers had utilized to install the basement bathroom in the first place. That seemed counterproductive to me. Thankfully, George was able to give me a list of capable craftsmen who would do the job right.

It was an interesting experience doing home renovation and interior decorating long distance, ultimately, Kat was proven correct. I really was the best person to handle it. Not only did I have all the experience of seeing and helping Judith with the four redecorations or complete renovations she had done to our home, but I had help. George proved to be a wonderful resource. So, did Shelby. Who knew that she loved home décor and furniture and that whole thing so much? I sure didn’t…but she did. And since George had told her that if she thought she was buying a crib she was bat-crap crazy. He was building her one from scratch and all she had to tell him was whether she wanted it painted or stained and if stained what shade. Once she’d made that decision, she was on hold until they were able to find out the baby’s gender. With nothing better to do, she pitched in to help me. Somehow, Mama Dani found out and before I knew it, I had an awesome spreadsheet all ready for me to organize my thoughts and choices. She even sent me a list of furniture and appliance retailers in New Haven with the best reputations. I managed to get the whole house, minus people’s personal spaces, furnished, decorated, at least theoretically…for under a hundred thousand dollars. Minus the twenty-five thousand for the basement and the fifteen my father gave me the week after we closed, that left me just under fifty thousand bucks I had to find from somewhere. I wasn’t sure how the hell I was going to pull it off…but I was determined.

However, my summer wasn’t all work, drama and trauma. I spent every other weekend on a short, get away date with James. We went to Kings Island one weekend. That was quite fun. I loved roller coasters and so did James so that trip was almost perfect. One weekend we spent in Cleveland visiting with his mom and sisters and Beth. On that trip, Ms. Kay took us to the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. “Your little soul sister, she is destined for this place. You should at least see it once before she drags you all here for the induction ceremony.” I couldn’t argue with her logic. I couldn’t believe that I’d lived my whole life so close to it and never visited. We also visited the Cleveland Museum of Art and the A Christmas Story House and Museum. There was still time spent shopping for his sister, Billie. She’d graduated in May and was heading off to Spelman that fall. It was a lot of fun and James and I had a ton of great tips to help her out. It felt a lot like when I’d gone shopping for bedding with Francine just two years before. James and I barely had any time alone that whole weekend, but it didn’t even matter. I got to spend time with Beth and with James and with his family so it was one of the best weekends of my life.

However, the date weekend I looked forward to the most was the weekend before the KAMA concert in Chicago. I left Lima immediately after work the Friday before the concert. By nine I was pulling into the valet at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago. As soon as James had sent me the hotel reservations for our long weekend, I immediately knew that there was something really major happening. James and I always stayed in nicer hotels…but not Four Seasons nice. James was waiting on me in the lobby. He’d already checked in and he took me up to the forty-third floor and let us into our suite…yes…SUITE. He’d gotten us a gorgeous two room suite with a lake view that made me dream of staying there forever. He’d already had room service bring up my favorite later evening snack, a snack I’ve thoroughly corrupted all of the roommates into loving. Natural honey Greek yogurt with almonds and pistachios was healthy and delicious…and not near as expensive as my true favoritest of all favorites, which James also had waiting on my arrival, a jumbo shrimp cocktail. He’d ordered an amazing unoaked white Rioja for us to enjoy with our ‘meal’.

I took a long, hot shower to wash away the day, before joining James in the beautifully appointed king-sized bed. I was feeling very powerful. The way his eyes had flowed over my naked body as I stood in the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom, the way his tall, thick, muscular body tensed just a bit more with want and desire. The way his long, thick beautiful cock tented the sheet he’d drawn up over his body. They all combined to make me feel desirable, desired and wanting…and rather…aggressive. I strode forward and snatched the sheet away. “Okay, Peaches, you feeling froggy.” He stated rather than asked his voice deep, rich and dark. It flowed over my enflamed nerves like melted chocolate.

I smirked and nodded. I’d learned long ago that term had nothing to do with the amphibious creature and more to do with a state of being ready to jump, or in that particular case, jump on someone. I was and I did. I knew how wet I was and I could see how hard James was, so I was confident that we could skip some of the preliminary warm ups. I straddled him and held him down by his shoulders as I kissed him fiercely. As the kiss grew deeper I rocked my hips, humping my pussy along the swollen underside of his cock. My hands slid down his chest tweaking his hard little nipples as they traveled to our hips. When my hand wrapped around the base of his dick, James moaned into a third or fourth kiss. I shifted and rubbed the head against my clit, my own moan joining his. When I slid down his shaft, my back arched and so did his. By the time I’d surged and retreated until he was fully seated inside me, I was coming in a flurry of muttered words of love and repetitions of the word fuck. I didn’t let that stop me from riding him hard and fast. I reveled in the pleasure I was receiving from him and the pleasure I saw on his face. “Fuck, I’m so full.” I grunted as I rocked my hips faster and faster, reaching for the ultimate pleasure that I knew being with James could bring me.

“That’s because you’re so fucking tight. And hot. And wet. Fuck, you feel good.” James shot back. “Shit, Peaches. Condom!”

“Don’t care. I’m on the shot.” I reminded him and something about feeling him skin to skin…that small measure of danger, however minute, sent me into a stratospheric orgasm. I was lost in sensation and pleasure and James, he took his moment to take control. He didn’t last long. Everything was just too good. When he erupted inside of me, the feeling of him painting my walls and cervix with his seed just did something to me. I came so hard my vision started to gray out.

James fell to my side and pulled me over until y boneless body was covering his as much as possible. “First of all…” he panted. “That was probably the best love we’ve made.” I nodded weakly. I was already starting to drift into sleep. “Second of all…we cannot do that again until after graduation. That was some ‘one time and I’m hooked’ shit right there, Peaches, God damn.” He muttered sleepily

The last thing I felt was his lips pressed to my forehead. I awoke a few hours later to the delicious feeling of James mouth on my breast and his fingers working gently between my thighs. The love we made that round was slow and sweet and yeah, protected. I could definitely see what he’d meant about going without a condom being addictive. I wanted to share every bit of my being with him…going without gave me a real feeling that we had shared it all. We finally awoke to the ringing of the phone. At some point James had set us a wake-up call for eight. If I’d thought that the posh hotel room –no-suite was the end of the surprises James had in store for me boy was I wrong.

After an exquisite, shared shower, we dressed and had breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant. Then James teased me into going to the spa with him, only for me to find out that he had set us up for a fifty-five-minute couple’s massage. But even that wasn’t the end of his surprises. When we finished our massage, Frannie was waiting on us in the spa’s waiting area. James treated her and I to forty-minute aromatherapy mani-pedis. When she and I finished, the three of us walked down to the iconic Gino’s East River to have a legendary deep-dish pizza. I had the signature spinach pizza with a blend of fresh spinach and mozzarella cheese. It was amazing. They brought the pizza to the table in the hot deep-dish pan. So, it was more than just delicious, it was an experience. After lunch James did the sweetest thing. “Alright, I know that you two haven’t had the chance to have much one on one, sister time this summer. So, I’m gonna make myself scarce and allow you to go and bond through what we all know is your preferred sport.” Frannie and I both knew he wasn’t talking about cheerleading. “Frannie, always a pleasure. Peaches let me know if you see some place you want to go for dinner. Oh, and don’t forget about Monday.”

I kissed him goodbye and, as soon as he was gone, I rounded on my sister. “Alright…spill it.”

“Spill what? And what’s happening Monday?” she hedged. Frannie had never successfully kept a secret. She was just too much of a bone deep, inherent tattle tale. From the way she got all wide eyed and innocent looking and her voice went all high pitched, I was sure that she was hiding something. I was also sure that I would get it out of her.

“A suite at the Four Seasons, a couple’s massage, mani-pedis for you and me? James is totally up to something and you know what it is. Now spill it.” I demanded.

Frannie shook her head trying to be strong. Her first attempt was distraction and then guilt. She shot me a disappointed look. “Maybe your boyfriend is just trying to do something nice for you. Give you a special weekend. Did you ever think about that?”

“I have no doubt that James is trying to make the weekend special. What I want to know is why? What is his end game?” I prodded.

My sister had grown stronger in the years since she took up the full mantel of that title. “You can wonder all you want. You can badger me all day long. But I’m not telling. You are going to have an amazing weekend that you will remember for the rest of your life. I’m not spoiling it.” 

“Come on, Frannie. If it’s that good, you know you want to tell me. It won’t ruin anything.” My tone turned cajoling. “You know you love telling secrets.”

She shook her head. “Maybe I do. And I am perfectly willing to admit that this may well be the biggest secret I’ve ever successfully kept. But I am keeping it. Now, you can either break out the hard-core torture devices…which I don’t think you could fit a water board in the wallet on a string that you’re calling a purse today. Or we can go and make sure that we are the cutest, sexiest, flyest White girls at your friend’s concert Tuesday night.”

I knew from the look on her face it was time to make a strategic retreat and regroup, because she wasn’t budging. So, I allowed her to believe that I had dropped the subject. We walked from the restaurant checking out the store and landmarks as we passed. Before we got to the bulk of the shopping, both of our phones voiced text alerts. “Just made a mint on the Youngstown deal so I put seventy-five hundred on each of your cards. Have fun, Girls. Love Daddy.”

That would have increased my suspicions, except for the fact that Daddy had a long history of giving us a small portion of his profits from his big deals. When we were young, the money had gone into our college funds and one or two small trinkets or candy pieces. As we got older, he’d take us to Columbus or Cincinnati for a day of shopping and five-star dining. So, I didn’t realize that it was part of the whole weekend until much later. 

Given that we were in one of the country’s true shopping destinations, I felt it was incumbent upon us to explore the smaller boutiques and specialty shops rather than going immediately to the department stores. After all we were pretty much their target demographic, young, thin, pretty young women with healthy wallets. Besides, I knew it was a lingering issue, but I still got a real kick out of being able to shop in those stores and fit all the designer clothes Judith had spent my entire childhood bemoaning the unlikeliness of my ever being able to wear, Frannie quickly agreed.

“Okay, but we should totally start from the skin out. Nothing breeds confidence like beautiful lingerie, she said brightly.

I happened to disagree with her a little. I felt the right pair of shoes were marginally more confidence inducing. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea to start with the lingerie. Inside 900 North Michigan Shops, we found an incredible little boutique called Enchante Lingerie. It was a very nice store and I found quite a few sets very sexy lingerie that I knew I was going to love modeling for James, and even a few sets of more going out appropriate undergarments. But I cut myself off when I hit a thousand bucks. Frannie looked over my purchases and shook her head. Then it was off to Rigby and Pellar where I hit the more normal lingerie jackpot. I didn’t even mind the fact that I’d not even found anything but underwear and I was down twenty-two hundred bucks. We went tripping through the mall looking for something awe inspiring to wear to the concert. We wanted to look young and trendy, but Frannie refused to allow me to look at jeans. So, it took me forever to find something. However, Frannie had much better luck. She quickly found a backless merlot crystal embroidered matte jersey bodysuit at Michael Kors and paired it with a black Plongé fringed skirt that was modern and sexy but still just a little bit classic. Whole outfit, one store. Lucky Bitch.

Then we wandered into the Gucci store and I fell in love. Nothing about that store said Quinn Fabray, but there was an amazing little black leather, strapless mini dress with intarsia flowers on it. It was more than half again what I had left from Daddy…but I could not resist. It was so not me…but it was so gorgeous. It was just too much. I bought it anyway. I found a pretty, much, much less expensive black silk dress to wear over it that would allow the starbursts on the bodice of the mini-dress to peak through the cutouts and deep v-neckline at Club Monaco. I would wear the more five star restaurant appropriate dress over the sexy as hell Gucci number for dinner and then leave the outer-dress in the car during the concert. As we were getting ready to focus on shoes and accessories, Frannie looked at me and asked again. “Hey what’s going on Monday?”

“Oh, we’re going to Six Flags with MeDe and her boys and their band.” I said absently as I looked through the directory for shoe stores.

As soon as I finished the sentence, she grabbed my hand and dragged me into Artizia. “I saw the cutest romper, but I don’t have anywhere to where it. And it was on sale, but I was a good girl and I put it back. You can look like a model in all the pictures people are going to be taking of you when you’re rolling with the rock stars.” Seriously, I wanted to be mad because I was ready to get to my favorite part of the shopping excursion. But then we went in there and damned if Frannie wasn’t right. It was a scarlet red, Azure Skies cropsey romper that looked amazing on me and it was only thirty bucks.

After Artizia, we started on an expedition to find shoes. Unfortunately, we didn’t find anything for either of us in that particular shopping center. So, we went for a six-block romp through another plaza of commercial happiness. We found some awesome accessories to go with our outfits and Frannie found a great lipstick and I got some new eyeshadow…but still, we couldn’t find the right shoes. The day had been amazing. Frannie and I had had a great time, we’d talked and laughed. I’d regaled her with stories of the fun things I’d done with Beth and Shelby and David so far that summer. She’d told me funny stories about her internship. She really was going to make a great therapist. I was so proud of her. But that didn’t change the fact that it was getting late and we still didn’t have shoes. So, we decided that we’d done enough adventure shopping and headed to a sure thing. Even with all our bags it didn’t take us very long to get to Nordstrom.

What we’d spent over two hours trying to get accomplished visiting smaller stores and boutiques, we managed to do in less than half an hour at the big department store. I got a pair of black, Vince Camuto, Chesta tall gladiator sandals to wear Tuesday night and a pair of brown, suede, Ugg Reagan wedges for the amusement park. Frannie found a great pair of black, leather…kind of retro…Kork-Ease 'Bette' wedge sandals that she swore felt like she was wearing flats even though they gave her more than four inches of extra height. Like she needed it, my older sister was four inches taller than me and was sometimes confused for a model.

I was getting ready to text James to see what he wanted to do for dinner when Francine stopped me as she stared at her own phone. “Umm, I think…I just got a text from James’ mom. Ms. Kay says that she expects me to come to dinner tomorrow with you and James.” She said confused.

I shrugged. If Ms. Kay was in town, then I could definitely see her telling Frannie that since she was my family, she was to come to the family dinner. “Well, then, I guess that you’re going to meet the rest of James’ family.” I chuckled.

“Oh, God…what am I going to wear?” she groaned. That made us both look down at the vast amount of bags we were carrying and bust out laughing.

I walked Frannie back to the Four Seasons, where her car was parked, before returning to James and my suite. He was coming out of the shower, having spent his afternoon playing basketball with his cousins Tommy and Junior. If he’d have been dressed when I got back, we would have gone out for a nice dinner somewhere. I was sure of that. But he was only wearing a towel wrapped around his hips and as I watched beads of water flow down his chest and stomach into that towel, I knew that there was something I wanted in my mouth a lot more than food. Eventually, we did order something from room service, but we didn’t make it back out of our room until the next morning when we headed over to his Uncle Steve’s house to go to church with his family.

I knew it was foolish…but I’d dressed with care that morning. My green gingham Michael Kors A-line, midi, halter sundress was paired with a tan shrug sweater and a pair of simple tan leather, strappy sandals with a church appropriate three-inch heel that matched the floral belt around my waist. I wore very, very little makeup, just eyeliner, mascara and a subtle lip gloss. My hair, which had grown back down to once again reach the middle of my back, was pulled back at the temples and held back with a simple gold clip. Small gold knots glistened at my ears. I wore my slim, Tory Burch, gold Reva stainless steel strap watch, but no other bracelets or rings. With a last check to make sure that I had everything I needed in my purse; room key, cell phone, wallet containing cash for the offering, lip gloss and balm, a small notebook…just in case the pastor said something deeply profound to me during his sermon…mint flavored gum…to chew to help me stay awake if he was deeply boring. I grabbed my Bible from my carry all and I was ready to go.

James was waiting on me in the living room of our suite. He was looking incredibly handsome in a dark gray suit and light ivory dress shirt. He’d forgone a tie, but was wearing his class ring, his understated Movado Bold black watch and the thick, platinum cross I’d gotten him for his birthday the year before. I wished I was wearing my own crucifix, but the dress wouldn’t work with it, so it was staying in the room. He gathered his room key and shoved it into his pocket and we headed out the door.

We were both quite surprised to find Frannie waiting on us in the lobby. “Mrs. Kay called me last night and told me that she expected to see me at church with the two of you this morning, too.” she explained to our unasked questions. It was easy to see that she too had taken care with her appearance. Probably because we’d had it drilled into our heads from a very young age that a lady was immediately identified by her carriage, appearance and diction. When I was young, Grandmere would often point out our mother’s failings in those areas. I’d recently realized that she did it as a form of vindication or vengeance for the way Judith had treated my younger self. Yet, all those years later, Frannie and I tended to fall back on those lessons whenever we were nervous. Whatever the reason, my sister looked lovely in a black and white gingham midi-sun-dress with a larger, bolder check than my own green and white dress. Her dress had wide shoulder straps, which allowed her to wear her antique crucifix. Like me, her makeup was simple and light. She had pulled her shoulder length, honey blonde tresses into a Cheerio pony…even years later that was still a hairstyle that every former Cheerio could do in her sleep.

Since Frannie’s car hadn’t yet left the valet station and we’d forgotten to call ahead for James’ or mine, we rode together in her navy-blue Jetta. James was a great driver. We’d left the hotel at a quarter to ten and we arrived at Salem Baptist Church with fifteen minutes to spare before their ten thirty service began. The church was Huge. It was larger than the Catholic Church or Ada Methodist in Lima. I was pretty sure that it was bigger than the churches we attended in New Haven too. Cousins Tommy and Junior were waiting on us outside the church and they took us in to join the family in two of the very long pews. Steve’s family was fully present and accounted for. The only person some might claim to be missing was his first wife, but as I understood it, it was best that they not be in the same place at the same time…ever. The choir was a good size, larger than some, but not as large as I almost expected of such a large congregation. Theiy had a total of six leads, and a few of them were almost as good as MeDe and Artie. I definitely had a few ‘come to Jesus’ moments while they were singing.

The sermon was delivered by Pastor James T. Meeks. He had all the visitors stand before he went into the sermon, but we didn’t have to say anything, thankfully. We did have to deal with a lot of hand shaking though as the congregation was admonished to greet all the visitors. It was on the subject of God’s love and was titled ‘He Still Loves Me’. His scripture reading came from Luke chapter thirteen. It was a good sermon, but it was almost ridiculous in the length. Probably he needed a Benton Jones in his deacon board to remind him that no one wanted to sit in a pew all day. Then he stretched out the ‘Call to Discipleship’ out forever too. I was so glad that a different pastor did the benediction.

After church, most people wanted to ‘greet’ Uncle Steve and his family and visitors. It had taken another half hour before we could head to the Harvey family home by then, James and I, and presumably everyone else was starving. Thankfully, Mrs. Kay, Mrs. Marjorie and Marie had handled most of dinner before they headed to church and Uncle Steve and Mrs. Marjorie’s housekeeper, Serena, had taken care of the rest. Within fifteen minutes after we got to the house, everyone was washed up and around the table. The food, oh good Lord the food. There was cabbage, collards, peas, beans, okra and sweet potatoes. There was fried chicken and stewed chicken with a rich, buttery gravy filled with shallots, onions, garlic and mushrooms. There was a great pot roast with carrots and fingerling potatoes. We all ate and laughed and had a blast. Billie had a million questions for Francine, since she was pretty sure that she wanted to major in psychology as well. That or Sociology. What followed that statement was the most hilarious thing I’d ever seen.

Mrs. Kay looked at Billie. “Sociology or psychology…what, exactly, do you envision doing with either of those degrees?”

Billie blushed. “I thought that if I became a social worker or a psychiatrist, I could help soldiers who come back with PTSD or the gold star family members with their grief.”

Everyone started looking around. Francine smiled. “That’s an amazingly generous thing to want to do.”

“Yeah, ‘cept Billie doesn’t have a generous bone in her whole body.” James said quietly under his breath. Cousin Junior on his other side gave him a fist pound for that observation.

But for the next fifteen minutes, that was the closest anyone came to actually stating what everyone was thinking. Instead, they all tried to be supportive, while offering alternates that would be more in line with Billie’s personality. Finally, after watching everyone pussyfoot around the main point they were all trying to make, Steve’s voice cut through all the clutter. “Oh, I see…that’s how y’all gonna be? Gonna make me say it. Gonna make me be ‘Uncle Steve the Dream Crusher’?”

His daughter smirked. “Well Dad, you are kind of good at it. Remember when I wanted to be a hip hop dancer and you told me that I was the exception that made it a rule that all black people have rhythm. I only stopped talking to you for like a week.”

Steve gave her a quelling look. “Fine then…Wilhelmina, you know I love you…but you know you ain’t got the patience to listen to other people’s problems. Didn’t you just make Junior cry because he asked you for some advice about a speech he had to give at his old high school while you were reading a couple of months ago? You’d have been better off saying that you needed to see a psychiatrist because you thought about being a social worker. You know that you’re about as flighty as they come in this family.” He told his great-niece with brutal honesty. Then his gaze softened. “Now, what is it you really want to do?”

Billie shook her head defiantly. “I really do want to major in psychology. Spelman has a great program for it and I do love figuring out how people’s minds work.”

“That’s because you’re nosy as hell…not because you want to help them with their problems.” Cousin Tommy pointed out. “Could you be a good shrink? Hell yeah, you’re smart enough, you could do anything. But you’d end up hating it within a year, maybe two.”

“So, what am I supposed to do?” Billie asked when she was finally willing to acknowledge what everyone was telling her.

It was James who spoke up, giving Billie advice that was sound and smart. “Billie-Barbie…nobody said that you had to declare a major the minute you walked on campus. You can be undecided until you finish all your core curriculum classes. That could give you three to four semesters to figure out not just what you can do, but what you want to do. You can always do volunteer work to help Vets and families like ours. To be honest, I always thought that you’d be a great writer or maybe an editor…let somebody pay you to read all the time.”

She got a greedy smile all over her face. “That would be a dream job.” She laughed. “I could do English or journalism and business management…I could become a publisher or an agent for authors. I don’t like to write books near as much as I love to read them.”

“You always have. You were reading before you were potty trained.” Mrs. Kay reminded her fondly.

For some reason that struck everyone as funny and the rest of dinner, the rest of the afternoon was spent talking and laughing and just spending time with each other. But by about five, Mrs. Marjorie decided that she wanted to take Billie shopping to get some new stuff for college. She decided that all the ladies should go. Uncle Steve groaned as did all the guys, which somehow ended up translating into them having to go to…that was a master class in marital manipulation. It was pretty sweet to watch. Thankfully, Billie wanted to go to look at laptops first. Mrs. Marjorie decided to hit the Best Buy on the Magnificent Mile. Since, we were so close to our hotel, and Frannie and I were still peripherally family, we were able to get away pretty soon after while Uncle Steve worked on spoiling his college bound great niece a bit.

James and I said goodbye to Frannie and made an early evening of it. The next morning, we were up early. We showered, dressed and were out the door by eight thirty. I had worn the pretty red romper, but decided that the day was too hot and I would be sweating too much to force myself to don the comparatively unnecessary strapless bra. James was wearing a red heather tee-shirt that I didn’t really understand. There was a little robed monk looking figure writing in a big book with the words ‘Jawa Script’ under it. He found it hilarious and Sam, Artie and Lauren all loved it. He’d thrown on some khaki cargo shorts and a pair of sneakers that he proclaimed were not just sneakers… “Peaches, these are Nike Air Jordan 1 "Chicago"s. Calling them just sneakers is like calling Louboutin’s just some heels.”

“Which you’ve done, repeatedly.” I pointed out earning a fond shake of his head and a kiss for my troubles. It may have gone even farther, but we realized that we were running late. So, after a quick necessities double check, we headed out to meet the ND clique and the Commune Crew and tour crew at Lou Mitchell’s Diner. I really enjoyed breakfast. The diner’s food was amazing. It was a good thing that we were going to have a day of serious walking. I ate more bacon than I was comfortable admitting aloud and that was in addition to the best Eggs Benedict I’d ever had other than Maria’s at home. It was so worth the exercise that I would need to do to work it off, though.

I was happily shocked when Shelby and David walked in with Beth and Puck’s uncle, aunt and his older little girl. I went over to hug Shelby, who was starting to visibly display her pregnancy. “Surprise.” She said cheekily.

“I know…you didn’t say that you guys were coming to Chicago too.”

David chuckled. “We actually hadn’t intended to. But then Saul and Mills called to tell us that they were bringing Nikki to go to Six Flags with her parents, and asked if they could bring Beth. And you know how much Beth adores her big sister and vice versa, how could we say no.”

Shelby took over from there. “When they asked if we wanted to come too, well, its ben a while and I do enjoy theme parks…even if there will be a lot of rides I can’t go on this time. I’m still excited to go.”

She wasn’t alone in her excitement. As we loaded into the vans, everyone was talking and chatting, the enthusiasm was contagious. I was certainly looking forward to all the thrill rides. Thankfully, the drive from downtown Chicago to Six Flags Great America was long enough to allow my, and everyone else’s, food to settle…even those of us who had over indulged. That was especially important since between MeDe and Nikki’s love of centrifugal rides and the guys’ love of roller coasters, I was fairly certain that my stomach didn’t stop getting slung back and forth until we finally left that park about ten hours after we arrived. But I had so much fun. Beth and I sat for a caricature, and then James and I did the same. We ate a ton of carnival foods. I shared a funnel cake with Beth and Nikki. We rode all the rides. MeDe and I accompanying Nikki and Beth on the kiddie ones, while we allowed our men to ride the coasters that were so big the girls couldn’t do and that scared us too bad to want to ride them with the guys.

But it wasn’t just the time I got to spend with the more extended part of my family, I enjoyed spending time with my framily too. I had a great conversation with Finn and Lauren and Vince. Man, if he was just a couple of years older, I’d so introduce him to Frannie. He was a truly stellar individual. I got a chance to tease Santana about all her feelings. They shined beautifully in her eyes every time she looked at Artie or Brittany. I picked out souvenirs with Brittany. She told me about how much she was learning from Rainbow. We even talked through her feelings of dread for the fact that once they graduated, Santana would want to launch her career and Brittany would need to go dance on her team. Which was a great thing but it would mean not dancing with Commune and the friends she’d made with their crew. That saddened her a little. So, I just reminded her that no matter where she went and who she worked for or with, Mercedes, Sam and Noah would always be her friends, and that it was probably true of the other dancers too. It cheered her up a little bit…well, that or the Harley Quinn hat she found…one of the two.

To talk with Artie, I had to wait out my boyfriend. He and Artie and Lauren got started talking computers. To make sure that my existence never devolved into constantly waiting out techno-conversations, I just needed to avoid the three of them having a convo anywhere near Drew. Usually, I’d have left James to what made him happy, but I stood there and waited it out that day…though not for completely altruistic reasons. I needed to get some research software for a class coming that next semester and I needed to know which one was the best. Artie would know and if he didn’t, he’d find out. And unlike my boyfriend and our roommate…Artie could translate his explanation into English. The whole day, we’d chilled in couples and thruples but we’d also walked around in small groups of friends too. Beth and Nikki had had a blast. I don’t think either of them spent a total of fifteen minutes on their own two feet all day. Shelby and Mills, who I hadn’t heard was pregnant, but I was pretty sure she was, had spent more time chatting and talking than they had going on rides, but they were both all smiling and happy when we left.

After dinner, Finn blatantly asked if we Original New Directions plus Blaine and Vince, could do something. Puck and Santana both wanted to find a club and go do something. But that got shot down real quick, “My feet and legs hurt from all the walking I saw y’all mofos do today.” Artie scoffed. “No way do you guys actually want to go to a club after all that.”

Lauren cosigned as did Vince. It was quickly decided that we’d go to Commune’s place and hang out. So, that was exactly what we did. Unfortunately, we also got more than a little inebriated. I blame the tequila. I was never, ever drinking tequila again…ever. Tequila turned me into a Joe Nichols song character. Thankfully, Kurt and Blaine were too busy sixty-nining a few feet away to notice James fingering me until I came or my repaying him with my own superlative blow job a few minutes later. Thankfully, none of our shenanigans made the morning news…at least not the private/naughty ones. However, I clearly remembered instigating the whole ‘we join KAMA for the encore’ thing. I’d enjoyed doing it at their album release party and thought it would be a blast. I didn’t expect that I’d end up playing Hummel’s handmaiden all afternoon, though. He worked me and Lauren like we were his bitches. But we didn’t grumble or complain. Well, other than to remind him that Lauren was not wearing a short dress on that stage and that she wanted to not show her arms off. Which was a travesty…after two years of collegiate wrestling training, she had strong, defined arms. Though, I could understand, if she wasn’t comfortable, she just wasn’t comfortable.

We managed to get ‘stage gear’ for those of us who needed it and get me back to my hotel in time to get dressed for my date. But really only because Kurt and Lauren came up and helped me with my hair, Lauren, and makeup, Kurt. We almost ran a little behind because Kurt thought that covering the Gucci mini-dress was a crime against fashion, but I reminded him that I was going to a very upscale restaurant before the concert. Even with our little kerfuffle, at six James and I walked into Grace looking every bit the beautiful couple we both knew we were. When we got to the restaurant, things were going perfectly. The Maître ’D was efficient and polite, we were shown to our table. We had a great view of the Kitchen Window, a prime location in the restaurant. The night seemed like it was going to be perfect. Every aspect of the restaurant’s interior was well thought out. The walls had strategic jutted counter tops where wines were placed and discreetly removed and rotated around during the wine pairing experience. Then we met our waiter. Peter took one look at me and immediately started fawning all over me and basically ignoring James. Thankfully, there was actually pretty well a whole staff for each table. Or our experience would not have been as pleasant as it was.

In fact, while James and I were debating why Peter was acting like a douche, I thought racism, James thought jealousy, the restaurant staffer whose job it was to in taking note of each table's pace, whoever they were, they had noticed Peter’s behavior and reported it themselves. The staff member in the kitchen watched the diners to make sure that their dining experience was completely seamless. They made sure that the waiters did not bring out new dishes until everyone was present like when I was guided to the beautifully appointed rest room. They also didn't remove anything until we had both completed the course. How they took note of us so subtly was beyond me as the wait staff, during downtime, simply stood in the shadows along the back wall. Why did they take the time and energy to do that? Because every time new dishes were brought in or completed, there was always a pair of waiters who had synchronized their moves to either replace or remove something at the same time. The Grace staff had gotten transitions between courses down to a T. Anyway, while we were still trying to figure out the why’s of Peter’s behavior, the Maître ’D came over and apologized for his behavior. He was replaced with a young lady named Helen, who was polite and kind and efficient and in every single way absolutely amazing.

Words simply could not express the dining experience we had that night. The food was awe inspiring. The restaurant offered ‘tasting menus’ in two choices. One was called Flora and the other was Fauna. Since there were two of us, and we wanted the fullest possible experience, we each picked one choice with a wine pairing. Every single dish was absolutely beautiful. A visual and gastronomic delight was set in front of us with each remove. The plates themselves were a work of art. Our opening finger food dishes were made of bees wax and it could have passed as a sculpture itself. The wine pairing was worth every extra penny. Grace wasn’t simply a restaurant…it was an event in and of itself. While we were dining, there was another event at a table nearby. As I was thinking to myself that Grace was the kind of place that men took women to propose, a woman who was maybe a year or three older than Frannie gasped so loud the whole place heard her. As she lifted a petite, but sparkling, diamond ring that had been in her cake, her date got down on one knee in front of her. She joyously agreed to become his bride…I found myself wishing that they were James and me.

In all the years of going to fine dining establishments with my grandparents and my parents and eventually with James, I’d seen any number of marriage proposals…I’d even seen the very, very rare public proposal rejection. Over the years, I’d felt envy seeing them. I’d envied a woman my mother scoffed at who was being asked to marry a handsome man who looked at her with such love and desire that it took my breath away. I’d envied the beautiful dresses the beautiful women wore. But I had never envied their and their date’s desire to be together forever. I was happy for them. Even when my parents’ disastrous behavior had made me stop believing in forever, I’d still felt a certain measure of happiness at their joy. But that night…I’d never wanted more to be the woman with the man she loved asking her that all important question. I shoved that feeling aside as we finished our meal and James settled up. He’d handled it all like Grandfather used to. I had no definite idea what anything cost, just estimations based on past experience.

Despite our early reservations, and the close proximity to the concert venue, we didn’t make it to the United Center until the near the end of Alessia Cara’s set. I slipped off my over dress and fluffed up my curls as, James came around and opened the door to help me from the car. As soon as James and I arrived, one of the Rangemen, Junior I think, showed us to the New Directions’ and KAMA family box. We were situated directly across from the stage in one of the twenty-person suites on the lower level. It gave us a perfect view of the stage and Nikki and Beth were taking full advantage of it. They were looking out over the crowded floor and all the people leaving their seats on the floor and up the stands. They were back as quickly as they could manage while on the stage the roadies were clearing the Cara stage set and getting the KAMA stage set up. Frannie was over there with them, looking more than a little awesome in her new outfit.

While that was happening outside our box, inside our little area of the massive arena Kurt and Blaine were bringing me up to speed on the songs we would be singing for KAMA’s encore. They had videos of the dances that we’d be doing. It was many steps up from swaying and making like the Pips in the background…but not so complex that I didn’t have it down in a few minutes. My former classmates and forever friends had even recorded the practice, so that I could go through them and get myself ready for the performance. But before I could move to the side to do that, Kurt, wanted to go through our timeline. “We just have to go back stage as soon as they start ‘Leave a Light On’. It’s the last song in the second set. Probably, by the time we get back there, they will be just about ready to go for their last real set.”

Blaine took over from there. “Once we get back stage, the five of us will sit through hair and makeup. James, Cedes, Sam and Puck said you can come and you can dance…but you have to lip-sync…or you can just come back and watch the encore from backstage. Whichever way you want to do it.” Blaine’s tone was teasing. Sometimes I almost forgot that they’d been friends for years before I ever met either of them.

“I’ll just come back and watch from backstage. I’m not one for getting out in front of thirty thousand people.” James shot back.

Blaine and Kurt seemed to find that funnier than I did. But it was amusing. “Okay, so yeah, we’ll dress and hopefully have time for a quick warm up.”

“I don’t know…we’ll be singing along so we shouldn’t need much of a warm up.” Kurt reminded his fiancé.

“If you two will go first in hair and makeup, I can do my physical warmups then.” I postulated.

We got all of that settled and focused on our friends’ show. I had to say, KAMA knew how to put on one hell of a show. I’d seen their finale look, and yet I still wasn’t prepared for their opening apparel. It wasn’t revealing or anything. It was just awesome. MeDe was in wine Marchesa Notte while Tana, Tina and Xena were in the black versions of the same lace, ruffle-hem, halter neck, cocktail dress. While the background singers were in black heeled sandals, Mercedes’ footwear were a pair of silver metallic leather, four and a half inch high sandals with crystal embellishments around the ankle and a waterfall of crystals down the vamp and she rocked them like they were a pair of Sketcher comfort sneakers. Her hair was huge…a big, voluminous waterfall of waves and curls that reached almost to her waist. She truly shined like a star. Brittany and the other girl dancers were in flowy, lacy black maxi-dresses with burgundy leotards underneath and wine-colored dance shoes. I noticed that Erika was in sexy, rocker chick, black leather, high waisted shorts and a lacy wine-colored lace top with a black bandeau bra under it. Her hair, like Santana, Tina and Xena’s was done in big curly faux hawk styles, adding some rock to their main-stream fashionable looks.

Sam and Puck were happy to be guys, but being guys meant that their fashion was a little bit boring. They were dressed well, but not as well as their woman or the other females on the stage. Puck was dressed more casually than Sam, in a burgundy shirt that had portions that were lighter than others and gave it an almost tie-dyed effect…its sleeves were of course rolled up to show off his forearms. His pants were a shade of black so dark that they almost seemed to draw light in. Sam’s outfit was in similar colors, but shirt seemed dressier and lighter. His pants were slightly less dense a darkness, but not that much. It still struck me as funny seeing him dancing with any measure of fluidity. He’d never been as bad as Finn, but he was not a dancer…at all. The male background dancers were dressed far more formally than even Sam. In fact, in their burgundy dress shirts and black slacks, they looked like they’d just come from meetings and taken off their ties and blazers. Artie looked like Artie. Just in a burgundy polo rather than an actual short sleeved button-down shirt.

The music was every bit as amazing as one expected from MeDe, Puck and Sam, but it was really an intimate spectacle. I found myself so fascinated that even though I had prior knowledge of the set list, I was still surprised when one set ended. I was absolutely shocked when I realized that an hour had gone by. Kurt had been very right. We’d sung along. I’d danced with James for a song or two. I’d danced with Beth and Nikki…in fact, I danced so much I was pretty sure that I had no need to do a physical warmup after all. Especially not after DJ CA$$’s set. I was a Cheerio for almost all of high school and I’d still never had that much physical activity in forty-five minutes in my life. The second set was an emotional roller coaster. They had so many different love songs and sexy songs, but they also had their tributes to Tamir Rice and Emmitt Till in that set too. I was so engrossed in the music and the showmanship, Finn had to tap me on my shoulder to get my attention when it was time to go.

James and Frannie came with and I was a little surprised to see Frannie making the trip. But like James, she wasn’t hindered or bothered as we headed backstage. Our escort for that trip introduced himself as Chet. Chet and Frannie seemed to hit it off like gang busters on the long walk from our box to the back-stage hair and makeup area. In fact, he stayed chatting with my sister and my boyfriend as Lauren and I were given a similar hair and makeup look to the ones they’d just done for the KAMA background singers whose curly faux-hawks had been clubbed into thick buns at the back of their heads. We’d made it to the back just in time to join in on the pre-set prayer before they returned to the stage. As I sat in the chair, I couldn’t see the trio behind me talking, but just the murmurings of James voice soothed me. Trina and Dee along with three of the locals handled the five of us and we were readied quickly and efficiently while KAMA and their Crew performed the last of their three main sets. Their stage apparel for the final set and encore was truly beautiful. Santana, Tina and Xena were in sleek dark metallic silver sheath dresses that had deep V necklines and stopped at their knees. Those were paired with the same black sandals from their opening look. By contrast, Mercedes’ A-line black and silver jacquard dress had a high low skirt that showed some of her thick thighs off. The thin, tank straps and sweetheart neckline showed the world-famous décolletage that women were already trying surgery to copy. But the highlight of the outfit had to be the knee high, glittery, silver, strappy sandal with beautiful scroll work going up the front of her legs. It was a surprising choice with the very formal dress, but they looked fabulous together. Like her girls, Mercedes makeup was mainly shades of silver and charcoal with bold deeper purple lips for her and wine for the girls. Lauren and I were treated to the same look.

Unfortunately, we’d not been able to find the same Milly Camilla plunging sequin open-back cocktail dress that the regular background singers were wearing in my size and there was no time for us to get the one they did have and alter it. We had managed to find me a Halston Heritage sleeveless, V-Neck, Lurex jersey, midi dress that was a pretty perfect blend of their dresses and Lauren’s Halston Heritage sleeveless, halter-neck, textured metallic, evening gown. Lauren’s dress covered her a lot more than anyone else’s but it did have a slit up the front that was pretty damn fierce. With Hudson’s help, Kurt had managed to get us the same subtly glittery body stocking things that all the non-dancer ladies wore under their stage apparel. It may have taken both me and Lauren, Frannie and Kurt’s help to get those damn things on. After leaving me at the hotel, Lauren had had a crash course in high heels, we’d both been gotten the same black, Vince Camuto Saraya sandals Tana, Tina and Xena were wearing.

Finn, Kurt and Blaine were all wearing the same thing that Arjun, Damien and Adam were wearing; gray, Armani Collezioni scale-cut square cotton sport shirts, black Denim and Supply Ralph Lauren men's slim-fit cargo chino pants, Calvin Klein Saffiano leather roll buckle reversible belts, Fossil men's automatic modern machine stainless steel bracelet watches and black Vans. Kurt’s hair was higher than I had ever seen it before and Blaine’s curls were gelled in such a way that it put them on full display. Trina had done a thing where it didn’t look like they were wearing makeup, but Finn’s brown eyes look like shiny dark chocolate pools. Blaine’s hazel eyes were snapping with flecks of gold and Kurt’s sea-storm eyes were almost glowing. Then again, Lauren’s amber eyes looked like pools of gold and my own hazel eyes were sparkling with flecks of emerald that were so beautiful my own breath caught in my throat.

Hudson made sure that we were all in place and headed onto the stage to join our friends at the exact right moment. I wasn’t expecting to see a second drum kit on the stage, but Finn kissed Lauren on the cheek and went to it and took a seat behind it like that was an expected thing. It really did made sense…Finn was, at heart, a drummer. Behind a drum kit was the only place he had rhythm. Maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t have any rhythm…maybe it was just that he had a finite amount that was just not enough to run his whole body for dancing. But he did have enough to operate his two arms and his foot for drumming. Kind of like how Santana’s mother always said men weren’t actually stupid, it was just that God had given them two heads and only enough blood to run one at a time.

Even with a much larger…much, much larger…crowd than I was used to being in front of, at least to sing, being on stage with Santana, Brittany and Mercedes not to mention the rest of the New Directions, was as natural to me as breathing. We did six of the seven songs that comprised the encore and had just finished an amazing cover of India Arie’s ‘The Truth’ when MeDe called an unexpected halt to everything. “Guys, you all have been an amazing audience. Chicago is a city that Sam, Puck and I really do love to visit. Now, I know that this is really unusual, but I’d like your permission to bring some people out to help us make this final song even more special. Though I have to confess the special-ness is for my soul sister more than for you guys. I hope that you’ll forgive us.” As she finishes saying that, Frannie, Shelby and Beth, Daddy, Mama Dani and Papa Bent…the three of whom I didn’t even know were in town, and James all came out onto the stage from the entrance we’d come in while Steve and Ms. Marjorie and Ms. Kay, Maria and Billie plus Cousins Tommy and Junior all came from the other side of the stage.

While Mercedes addressed the audience, Sam and Noah had pulled me forward to just right of center stage. James walked up to me and dropped to one knee in front of me. The cameras that made sure that everyone in the arena could see, the entire concert, were focused on us. “Lucille Quinn Fabray…the first time I met you, I was fully prepared not to like you just because Blaine and Kurt are both insufferably smug when their matchmaking bears fruit. But then you laughed at something Kurt said and I knew that I wanted to hear that sound every day for the rest of my life. Over the last three years, you’ve been my friend, my best friend, my girlfriend and my lover. Please say that you’ll be my fiancée and eventually, my bride and wife?” he pulled out a small iconic blue box.

The ring he pulled out was perfect. A simple solitaire in a polished setting with a rounded, polished band. My hands shook as they surrounded his beautiful smile and I kissed him slow and sweet and deep. “There is nothing that would make me happier.”

The floor mics had picked up our every word. Over twenty-three thousand people all screamed and shouted and celebrated our love as James placed the ring on my finger and pulled me into a kiss that set my blood to flame. I honestly didn’t even hear MeDe, Sam and Puck launch into ‘Spend My Life with You’. I was hugged and congratulated by our families and our friend and all was right with my world. To celebrate, MeDe insisted that we join them at the after party as planned, so we didn’t make it back to our hotel suite until the next morning. We stayed there an extra night to do our own private celebrating. When we finally returned to living life, James and I called our roommates and shared the news they already knew from the social media frenzy the onstage engagement had caused. They were ecstatic for our joy. All of them said that it was a good thing we were getting the master suite. Topanga and Cory were engaged too, but he wouldn’t be living with us after all.

Neither would Frannie. While Yale had accepted her into their psychology doctoral program, Columbia had courted her for theirs. Plus, Chet would be replacing Junior as a primary on the KAMA detail come the fall…so New York won out over New Haven. The Basement was completely finished the week after Ms. Pillsbury’s wedding. Kat and her dad did the walk through for us and I sent the final cashier’s checks to our amazing vendors. I should not have been surprised to learn that someone…Mama Dani… had arranged for the painters who’d done the basement to paint the entire interior of the house according to the furniture and décor choices I’d made on the spreadsheet she’d made for me that I’d, of course, shown her when I had it finished. That wasn’t all she’d done with that information either. When we all met up for the KAMA Columbus concert, MeDe, Sam and Puck had given James and I our engagement gift…even though I hadn’t even started planning our engagement party which we would need to have over the winter holidays. So much to do…no time at all. Anyway, when we opened the envelope, we found gift cards and certificates for the stores noted on the spreadsheet and in quantities that would allow us to furnish not only the public spaces, also, at least, Kat’s bedroom.

It was one of the busiest summers of my life, but it was the most amazing three months of my life. I’d handled everything life threw at me with aplomb. I’d experienced joys that I’d been afraid would never be mine. I’d learned more about myself than I’d realized I didn’t already know. I was amazed everyday by the woman I’d become and how really, truly blessed I was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, another one bites the dust. The only thing that could have made Tom Price's resignation even better would have been if Jon Ossoff had won his seat in Congress. But still my former congressman turned HHS secretary is now jobless. I shall bask for a moment...before he becomes a high paid lobbyist and takes all the fun out of it. 
> 
> I Pray for the people or Puerto Rico. I have given to aide relief and I hope that all of you will give what you can. (Even if it's just prayers and online advocacy)
> 
> I won't go so far as to say I'm back on schedule, but I didn't want to hold this back any longer because I have to know what people think of it.   
> Leave me a comment.  
> Kick me some Kudos.  
> Let me know if you missed me or how this chapter worked or didn't for you. 
> 
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	12. I Love You, Always Forever (Donna Lewis) & Mom (Garth Brooks)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We hear from Emma and Shelby, which clues us in on the happenings in Lima

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to comment upon any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.  
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for your beta help.  
> However due to real life...which must ALWAYS come first...this chapter is Unbetaed. So, any mistakes are all mine and I apologize in advance.

Chapter 12

I Love You, Always Forever (Donna Lewis)  
Emma Pillsbury PoV

Cliché dictated that the third time was the charm. I knew on a deeply personal level that there was a real reason that cliché was till uttered on an almost hourly basis. Hal was the third man to ask me to marry them and, thanks to my weekly sessions with Dr. Harmon, I realized that he was the only man I had said yes to for exactly the right reasons. I’d said yes to Ken Tanaka because he was a deeply flawed as I was – just in a different way. I’d said yes to Carl Howell because he seemed to be the perfect man every little girl dreamed of marrying…who was I to say no. But Hal…I had said yes to Harold Gruber because I loved him more than I’d even loved anyone else in my life and because I couldn’t imagine living the rest of my life without him at my side. I said yes to Hal not because he completed me, but because for the first time since I was five years old, I knew that I was good enough and complete all on my own. Because he supported me in my moments of weakness and was proud of my moments of strength. I said yes to Hal and it seemed as if the entire universe was in support of that decision.

Ranger had arranged things so that I could keep the job that I loved and Hal could move to the Midwest to join me while keeping the job that he loved. At first I felt very guilty about that, but then Hal showed me the prospective numbers from their interest surveys. Lauren’s cousin Darcy really was an amazing talent. Much like Lauren herself. Interest in having Rangeman residential security was up in the Midwest by fifty-five percent and their corporate and business services were desired even more strongly. There had been a small problem with finding a place in Columbus that would be the main hub with smaller field offices in larger towns with a hundred or more clients that were more than sixty minutes’ drive from the hub. The field office staff would have bi-weekly fitness check-ins and therefore, Hal wanted something roughly the same size as the other hubs, Trenton, Atlanta, Boston and Miami, but within walking distance from a decent hotel. Hal had found a perfect, absolutely perfect building in March. It was even near the sports complex of OSU. The seller was trying to be a tough negotiator. That all changed when Finn, who happened to be leading the OSU football team by the building on their warm down stamina run…the coaches loved him because he could still exercise with the team, he just couldn’t play any longer. Finn paused to say hello to Hal by name and told him to ‘give Drizzle a hug’ when he got back to Lima. It turned out that the seller was a HUGE Buckeye fan. Since Hal was good friends with ‘Hero Hudson’, the seller let Rangeman have the building for ten thousand under asking price. Hal was very happy.

Then there was some problem with getting permits in place during the final stage of the renovations of the building. But again, an outside force stepped in and the problem suddenly ceased to be problematic. A few days later Rangeman was all over the news for saving a teenage girl from being raped at a KAMA concert. The pieces on the Veteran owned security company in the Columbus Dispatch were glowingly supportive of the fact that Columbus citizens would soon be protected by the former military men that the firm intended to hire. The very next day, Rangeman’s desire to convert some of the underground space to cells and interrogation rooms was no longer a zoning problem. Everything was going apace for Rangeman Heartland’s main headquarters to be fully staffed and opened in time for the start of the new school year. Sue and I were already helping Hal and Ram go through the resumes and CVs of the vets recommended to Ranger. There were a fair few of the honorably, and a few other than honorably, discharged former service members to go through and Ranger decided that Sue and I would be the perfect consultants to assist in the undertaking. Myself, because Ranger thought that I could read between the lines of their psych evaluations better than anyone else and Sue, because with her parent’s old network of contacts and connections…she was easily able to ascertain when ‘other than honorable’ should have been full blown dishonorable.

The two of them had met when Ranger came out to Ohio to handle some of the original paperwork involved with creating Rangeman Heartland. Sue had walked up to him and told him bold as brass. “My Mother told me to tell you that you’re welcome.”

Ranger quirked an eye at her. “May I ask why?”

“Turkmenistan, two-thousand and four. You and your team were pinned down by some Soviet Nazi-sympathizers. You were on a black op, no help was coming. My mother’s team was in the area. They took out the crew that had your team under heavy fire.” Sue smirked. “Mother really hates Nazis. She’s been taking them out since before I was born.”

“There is a legend of a Lady Doris…hopped from the USAC to MI-6 to the CIA to the German FIS back to the CIA.” Ranger said thoughtfully. It didn’t surprise me that he knew the name of Sue’s mother. “No history before she joined the USAC…little known about her other than the fact that she may…or may not actually exist.”

“That’s dear old Mom, alright. Not even I know her backstory. Just an old phone number to call if something happened to Dad while she was away before I was eighteen.” Sue admitted.

I looked at her like I’d never seen her before. “Did you ever call it?”

Sue scoffed. “Of course not, Fun Time Skooter.” I, later, had to actually google that one. Apparently, Skooter was Skipper’s red haired best friend. “I’m Sue Sylvester. I did not need adult supervision. Besides, nothing ever happened to Dad.”

I was surprised at that. The Sue Sylvester I knew was one of the nosiest, most curious people I’d ever met. It seemed odd to me that she had not called the number just to find out who was on the other end. But I said nothing. Sue was also very protective of her secrets. I respected her desire not to discuss the subject further. Ranger and his men did as well. So, everyone moved forward with their business. It was interesting that my two ‘bosses’ had a connection to each other. But it made my life easier, because that sole connection had bred a wealth of respect between the two of them. That respect worked out well for me. I always had the support I needed in working at McKinley and helping Rangeman.

Things at McKinley were going wonderfully. Test scores were up across the board. Sue had forced the board to allow her to ramp back up vocational arts courses. That really benefited about thirty-five percent of our students and the twenty-fifteen graduating class had had the smallest percentage of senior year drop outs we’d seen since I started at the school. Not every person was academically inclined and giving those who weren’t the opportunity to begin to explore their gifts was a necessity. That summer, Sue had even brought in a special new guidance counselor whose job it was to identify those kids as early as possible. Shane Montgomery was a small, wiry, Biracial man in his later twenties. He had master’s degrees in statistics and career assessment therapy. I found him to be very interesting. He’d graduated from high school while serving time in juvenile detention. He’d gone on to college and worked his way through a state school working construction during the day and going to classes in the evening and online. He had completed his masters in much the same fashion. I found his determination to complete his education not just refreshing, but inspirational. The first day he came in to meet the guidance department, he’d sighed. “I feel like that kid from the first Jurassic Park movie. I worked so hard to get out of high school…now here I am back in the car.”

“Yeah, but at least you’re out of the tree.” Lisa Roundtree, our guidance department secretary, said with a wicked grin. Lisa was only a little older than Shane and had just gotten through a ridiculously quick divorce. She’d married a man she’d dated for three years over Thanksgiving break the previous school year and by Spring Break they were separated with the divorce paperwork filed. I tried not to listen to gossip, but I had overheard her and Molly, the ninth and tenth grade counselor, talking about the subject on more than one occasion. Her perfect seeming husband had changed after the wedding and hit her one Sunday afternoon when his sports team had lost. She’d left that same day and filed for divorce the next. She was certainly a strong woman. I admired that in her.

With the addition of Shane, we were now four counselors strong. Given the nature of his remit from Sue, he would handle the incoming ninth graders. Molly would have the rising tenth graders. Sandy would manage the eleventh graders and I would handle our college bound seniors. I knew that Sue wasn’t done. She also wanted to bring in a true psychologist who specialized in teens and young adults to handle the more emotional counseling aspects of the student population’s needs. Coach Sylvester wasn’t happy having just the McKinley High Cheerios and New Directions held up as national models she wanted McKinley, and therefore herself, held up as a perfect prototype of a high school. To be honest, I wasn’t so sure that it was a bad thing. She did seem to have ideas on running the school that were exceptionally beneficial to our students.

It was strange. Even though I was technically working a full time and a part time job. I had still found time to plan my entire wedding and to help Shannon with the planning of hers. Shannon and Marc were getting married the first weekend of our winter break. The wedding planning was most enjoyable. I found that it channeled my ability to focus on the minutest of details into a positive avenue. Hal laughingly suggested that if I ever found myself in need of a third career, I’d definitely found it. He may well have been right. I planned an entire, medium sized wedding in under a year. All while working more than full time, supporting a long distance then an immediate intimately close relationship and fostering a class of graduating seniors. I was pretty proud of myself. But even more so, I was deliriously happy.

Everything was going smoothly. The weekend before, Hal and I had double checked all the last-minute details. I’d verified all our vendors and made sure that everything was set on their end. Hal had made sure that the hotel had all the rooms we needed reserved for when we needed them. Our favors and the gifts for our wedding party had arrived and were all wrapped and ready to go. Everything from the seating chart to the place cards were set and ready to go. The wedding party was due to start arriving on Tuesday to make sure they had all they needed and so that the groomsmen could help Hal with some surprise he had planned for the rehearsal dinner. We were actually having the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner on Thursday. The step away from tradition had to be taken when Sam, Noah and Mercedes gifted Hal and I with tickets for our entire wedding party to attend their concert in Columbus on Friday night. The Monday before Hal and my big day, I’d spoken with Hudson Freidman. She was a wonderfully efficient personal assistant. She made sure that I had everything that I needed on my end to allow Mercedes, Noah and Sam to skype in for the rehearsal.

I was honestly and pleasantly surprised when Kurt Hummel appeared at my door the very morning. He talked me into accompanying him to the coffee shop. He offered me his services as a day of wedding coordinator. “I know you, Ms. Pillsbury, you’ve had comprehensive wedding rehearsal and ceremony timelines and checklists ready to go for at least the last month. And you know me. you know that my attention to detail and abilities to micromanage event vendors and contractors without offending and-or pissing anyone off are second only to – well, you don’t know Haja very well, so I will claim that my skills are second to none.” He gave me a beseeching smile. “Please Ms. Pillsbury, let me do this for you. you were the very first authority figure to give me validation and support on my path to a fashion and style career that will, one day, have my name spoken among those of Lagerfeld, Mizrahi or Armani…eventually.”

I couldn’t say no. I knew that I couldn’t do it all by myself. And Kurt was right…there was no one in Lima that I could trust to pay attention to the tiniest details like him. “I would love your help, Kurt.”

The smile he gave me was blinding in its happiness. “You are going to have the best wedding day ever.” He promised happily. I could have told him that I knew that I would even if everything went completely wrong. As long as I was marrying Hal, the day would be perfect.

We headed back to my condo to go over everything that he was right, I did have all already set up. We’d barely settled down with my rehearsal, pre-wedding, during wedding, reception and post reception notebooks when the doorbell rang. I should have been surprised, but I really wasn’t to open it to find Cheryl, Ronald and their adorable two-month-old daughter Elianna Reese. Cheryl gave me a hug and she and Ronald brought the baby in. “No point in locking it…Mom, Ben, Caleb and Janine are right behind us.” Cheryl said with a smile. “And…I worked my ass off…but I did it. I fit my dress perfectly.”

Neither Ronald nor I pointed out that she’d actually ended her pregnancy at a weight deficit. She’d probably just had to tone to get her body back as she wanted it. By the time I’d introduced Kurt to my soon to be brother and sister-in-law, the rest of the Gruber family had arrived. With the last name Hummel, perhaps I should not have been surprised how well Kurt got along with Hal’s family. Apparently, there were a few little things that we could do to incorporate Elise and her late husband’s and therefore Hal’s Germanic heritage. In fact, the easiest to incorporate were ones that we’d planned on without conscious thought. Out first dance was set to be a waltz. Our wedding cake was three tiers, yes, but it was all light ivory and very simple. My bouquet was made up primarily of Lily of the Valleys. Hal had bought my wedding shoes, though I’d picked them out. These were things that either I or Hal had decided upon without really knowing why. Elise had one finale thing that she wanted us to add. “In America, the tradition is that the ring is worn on the left hand…but in Germany, the wedding ring is traditionally worn on the right hand. My grandparents were best friends and neighbors in the old country. All four of them immigrated to the US after World War I. My parents they took to America like ducks to water. By the time I was old enough to marry, both of my grandmothers were widows. When I married, Henry and I wore a set of wedding bands in the traditional American way, those of my Wimmer grandparents. And then on our right hands, we wore my Scholz grandparent’s rings. Cheryl and Ronald wear the rings of Helmut and Gerda Scholz on their right hands. I know that you and Hal have already purchased your wedding set. But I would be very honored if you would consent to wear Kurt and Ilse Wimmer’s rings.”

“I…I would be honored.” I said quietly. The rings were silver, which would go well with the platinum of my rings and the titanium of Hal’s.

Kurt was looking over my shoulder at the rings Elise had given me. “Oh my, are those German coin rings? Those…the real antique ones…they are very rare.”

Elise smiled. “They are. These were some of the first cast. But their true wealth is the history of love they signify. My grandparents’ marriages each lasted for over fifty-years. My own parents were married for almost sixty. That is my hope for my son’s marriages. That like those rings, they will stand the tests of time and weather all life’s storms.”

There was a heavy silence as we all took in the import of her words. Thankfully, Caleb was quite good at filling silence with humor. “Well that’s all well and good, but you’ve only got two sets of rings and four sons…well three that are actually gonna get married. Ben…don’t look at me like that…we all know that you like to date the kind of women who think that marriage would just curtail their social lives.”

“And that’s just the way I like it.” Ben threw back just as Caleb had expected. We all shared a warm laugh.

It was into that laughter that Hal entered accompanied by Ranger, Stephanie, Tank, Ella and Hal’s partner and best friend Ram. While Hal’s blood family lived near enough to drive, his chosen family had flown into Cincinnati checked into the hotel where we’d secured a block of rooms for our wedding party and guests. The Renaissance Cincinnati Downtown Hotel was a touch upscale for some budgets, but they were very interested in access to Rangeman’s services and had given us a wonderful deal for our friends and family. With Stephanie, Ella, Cheryl and Kurt all present, it was quickly decided that we should gather Shannon and Shelby if possible and text or Skype in my niece to verify that the bridesmaids had everything they needed. That would knock one more thing off my final week checklist.

I had never before felt so unnecessary in my life. Ella and Kurt had banded together and once Shannon and Shelby had arrived and Skype was set up with Betty, her mother Rosalyn and my sister Jane, the cabal was called to order and I became superfluous in the very best way. Forty-five minutes later and Kurt and Ella turned their attention to the groomsmen. After that Kurt and Ella made sure that Mommy and Elise were golden. Then it was my turn.

“Have you packed for the honeymoon?” Cheryl asked showing her priorities.

I nodded. “Hal, insisted that he wanted it to be a surprise. But he did tell me that I would need my passport and to pack for two weeks including a night at the theater and some time at the beach. I have tried to plan for all contingencies while sticking to two checked bags.”

Kurt chimed in next. “I know that you are not actually changing your dress for the reception. But are you changing shoes?”

Again I answered in the affirmative. “The ceremony shoes are lovely, but the heel is rather high for dancing. I found a pair of Easy Street Passion pumps at Macy and they will be my reception shoes.” I showed them pictures of both pairs of shoes and everyone agreed that the ceremony shoes might be prettier, the reception shoes would serve me well for dancing the night away. We went over all the other little details including Elise reminding me to pack a separate wedding night bag that Shannon or one of the other Limans, could bring back for me and I pick it up when we returned from our honeymoon. An hour after Cheryl voiced the first question to me, I was released from examination and declared fully prepared. I’d even managed to assure them that I had their Bridal Party gifts without actually telling them what they were. Hal had convinced me to be a bit unconventional. Instead of each of us buying the gifts for our half of the bridal party, we’d each purchased each member of our bridal party something. We all had a lovely dinner together allowing our friends and Hal’s families to get to know each other better.

Wednesday, Ranger, at Ella’s suggestion, treated all the women of the bridal party to a spa day at Spavia in Miami Township just outside of Dayton right about half way between Lima and Cincinnati. It was a great spa. Amazing reviews, and they were even kind enough to email me their hygienic and cleanliness practices along with seven years of their health department assessment reports. I found out quickly that Stephanie Plum was a bad influence on me. Though her influence just pushed me a bit out of my comfort zone…so, it wasn’t perhaps, all that bad. Somehow, she convinced me to get a full Brazilian wax. She did it in the most insidious way, everyone was scheduled to get one. There was simply no way to back out when my mother, mother-in-law and my niece were doing it. There was actually a bit of psychological trauma involved in knowing that my mother was getting her vaginal hair removed…but I tried very hard not to think of it too much. Then we all had either the purifying detox or the anti-aging perfecting wraps. Facials were also had by all. The vita-c radiance facial included a hot stone neck and shoulder massage and a deeply hydrating hand treatment high in anti-oxidants, vitamins a,b,c,e, omega 3,6,7 and 9 fatty acids. At least that was according to the lovely young woman of Asian descent who administered mine. The spa day was a wonderful way to hold a bachelorette kind of event without one of those degrading and humiliating ‘parties’ where everyone drank to the point of vomiting and some sweaty behemoth tried to put his lice infested genitals altogether too close to your face.

While we ladies were getting waxed, plucked, massaged and pampered, Hal, my daddy and his groomsmen had a day that made most of them deliriously happy. Shannon had Marc take the men to his favorite gym. They spent the better part of the morning working out together, teaching each other self-defense moves…or rather teaching Daddy, Caleb, Ben and Ronald defense moves. When they were done at the gym, they went out to lunch at Lourdes. A tour of the Lima Field office space was followed with a return to our condo and an afternoon spent playing Pandemic. While Hal loved it, I refused to play that game…all the therapy in the world wouldn’t return me to an even keel after even thinking of the title for too long. They met us all for dinner in Dayton at a Mexican restaurant that was loud and garish but had years of one hundred percent on their health inspections and large portions. After dinner we all split up, the Limans and my parents returned to their homes and the out of town visitors returned to their hotel rooms.

Thursday was a very busy day. But the morning…the morning was just for Hal and I. we had a lovely, quiet breakfast together. We’d awoken in each other’s arms. Hal and I had agreed to abstain from intercourse for the two weeks leading up to our wedding. But we allowed ourselves the comfort and pleasure of sleeping wrapped in each other’s arms. That morning would be the last time we’d enjoy that luxury until after we were declared man and wife. It was also the last time we’d see our little condo until we returned from our honeymoon. After breakfast, we washed, put away and covered the dishes in the cabinets. We cleaned out the dishwasher and dried it out as well. Hal took out the trash while I cleaned out the trash can. Then we took care of our toilets and cleaned the bathroom…together. We covered our bed and other furniture to protect it from dust and other particulates. We had both made sure that we had everything we needed. My wedding dress and shoes were awaiting me at my parent’s house, though I had everything else I needed from my wedding day lingerie, robe and slippers to my wedding night overnight bag and all my honey moon luggage.

From the moment we loaded into Hal’s midnight blue Chevy Tahoe, the next few days flew by. As soon as we got to Cincinnati, we checked into our hotel rooms. Then we toured the church, making sure that the church’s event coordinator had everything that was needed. We’d had to get them what basically amounted to depositions from my priest at the Episcopal Church in Lima, that I attended, pardon the pun, religiously. Hal had spoken to a Lutheran Cleric who had served on the last base he’d been stationed at. Fortunately, the man was a firm believer in love and was willing to state without lying, Hal’s being a member in good standing of that same parish. We had completed pre-marital counseling at my church in Lima. So, they did have everything in order. As soon as that was done, Jane and Rosalyn had made an appointment for all the ladies to get manicures and pedicures. I assume that Stephanie knew about it ahead of time since it hadn’t been a part of our spa day the previous day. We left the nail shop with just enough time to get showered and changed for the rehearsal and following dinner.

The rehearsal went swimmingly. There were no technical difficulties. We were using a rather traditional Episcopalian wedding ceremony, with two added songs. One of which was a solo from Mercedes and the other would be sung by her, Sam and Noah. We ran through it three times, then Father Walsh released us and we all went out a wonderful dinner where we gave out our gifts. I had found my ladies a great set of lab-created opal and white sapphire in white gold, necklace, earrings and a cocktail ring. The opals would look amazing with their pearl pink dresses…well Shannon’s was pewter gray, but it would look amazing with her dress as well. My mother was in a pink lace cocktail dress with a satin jacket while Elise would be in a silver lace dress with a matching dress. I’d gotten the bridesmaids jewelry sets for half off. I hadn’t even tried to find a sale for the mothers’ jewelry. I found them each a five-piece set of stretch bracelets, white, pink and dark gray cultured freshwater pearl baroque and crystal rondel tied together both of their dresses. However, unlike my bridesmaids, the bracelets were the matching pieces. I found Elise a gorgeous Belle de Mer sterling silver, pink, white and black freshwater pearl three-strand necklace and a pair of Majorica sterling silver, freshwater pearl triple drop earrings in the same colors. For Mommy, I found a more traditional Belle De Mer cultured freshwater pearl three-layer necklace and a pair of Honora Style cultured freshwater pearl & Swarovski zirconia linear drop earrings in sterling silver to finish off her gift.

Hal had gone a different route. He was a firm believer that women loved purses. It was something that he had learned from Stephanie. She loved them second only to shoes. So, with that in mind, he’d gotten them each a different Coach purse. My mother’s bag was traditional black Mercer satchel. His mother got a black Drifter crossbody bag because Elise was not a fan of large purses. Shannon got a brown reversible large market tote…while the rest of the bridesmaids got Mercer, glitter, rose grain leather satchels. Stephanie showed that this gift was right up her alley. She and Betty truly loved those purses. Then Hal gave my father and his groomsmen their gifts. He gave each of them a monogrammed blue and gray Yeti Hopper Two 30. My father was almost as happy as Steph and Betty about his Yeti cooler. Though Elianna was not able to be our active Flower Girl. She was an honorary one. So, we gave her a pair of real diamond earrings for when Cheryl took her to get her ears pierced and a rather large savings bond for her college education. Ciaran and Connor would each carry a pillow with our rings. They were each given a huge Lego toy set and the same size saving bonds for their educations.

I gave Hal’s men each a Skagen unisex signature stainless steel mesh bracelet hybrid smart watch. To go with the watches, I also got them a set of Sutton by Rhona Sutton stainless steel mother-of-pearl stone cuff links. And I’d found for my father a Rapport of London chrome demi hunter pocket watch with seventeen jewel movements, and the cuff links. Over the course of the meal, Hal’s surprise ran, it was a slide show of pictures of the two of us as individuals until the night we met at KAMA’s debut album release party and then of us as a couple from there. It was touching and lovely, a wonderful surprise. The dinner was delicious and with the kids present, we all adjourned to our hotel rooms rather early. Friday was a rather lazy day. I spent time with my mother, sister and sister-in-law just talking and chatting and really having a better discourse than we could usually have. It was really nice. We were joined by the other ladies after lunch and still, a nice time was had by all. The ladies all helped me take the gift baskets that we’d gotten to welcome our guests who were arriving that evening. We attended the concert in Columbus that evening and I had to say, I loved Stephanie and Betty’s reaction to the entire night. the music was spectacular. I got to see the young people I’d had a small part in molding into amazing adults really shine. In addition to seeing Noah, Mercedes and Sam ‘rocking out’, Artie had an amazing guitar solo. Santana and Tina performed a duet on a cover of ‘Same Script, Different Cast’. Sugar, Mike and Brittany all had dance solos in different songs. And they all did such amazing jobs. We joined the Native Limans on the tour’s families in the very front and we could see everything so clearly, including the love and passion all of them had for their careers. I truly enjoyed every single minute. After the concert, we went backstage and I was able to congratulate my former students, all of them, face to face.

“Ms. OCD,” Santana laughed when she hugged me. “Me, Artie and Brittany have a house. Its right up the road from Wheezy, Trouty and Puck’s place.”

I smiled proudly. “Santana, it is so wonderful that you guys are making such good choices. Real estate is almost always a great investment for your future.”

“It was less about investing for the future and more about actually being able to sleep in the present when we were in Lima. But it worked out great. Between our extra bedrooms and the Mansion Gala, Foghorn and the Zilla call home in Lima, we had to put the tour crew into a hotel, but the Crew-crew, other than the natives, and Justin whose at Casa Hart, they’re all staying with the six of us.” Santana told me happily.

I smiled knowingly. “You’re actually allowing people into your inner sanctum…you must be very close with them.”

She shrugged as she always tended to do when she didn’t want to admit to a positive human feeling. “Yeah, well, I lived up their asses last summer and have been working with them for over a year. Xena, the Dancing Girls, Eureka, Cass and Dave…those are my folks, ya know. Plus, Adams and Karofsky stayed their asses with their families, so I was good. Though Adams is damn lucky I haven’t snatched up Pajarita and kept her cute little butt, yet.”

I smiled, reading between the lines. Santana really cared about her bandmates and she was glad that Azimio and David were having a chance to spend time with their families. She did have a point, Azimio’s daughter was adorable. She attended the same daycare as Jeanie Sylvester-Motta and Sue often brought pictures of the two girls together. They seemed inseparable. “I am happy that you’ve become such good friends with your bandmates.”

“You know that between Wheezy, and me…no way were they hiring assholes.” She shared.

I let her have the final word. But I knew how hard it was for her to trust others. Rather than embarrass her further, I gave her a final smile of approval and told her I would see her the next day. I had not invited all the glee kids to the wedding, but my favorites…mainly those whose parents had become my friends…which was almost coincidentally, most of the original thirteen. I’d gotten to know Maribel Lopez long before Santana had joined the glee club. The woman had been fiercely protective of Santana’s future, but she’d never been blind to her faults. I respected her a lot. She and Santiago had been invited to every one of the weddings I’d planned. But they were not the only ones, Burt Hummel had been my mechanic since I moved to Lima. He was a good man and an amazing father. The Jones were my dentists. Their reputations were better than anyone else in the state for cleanliness and sterility. Both the Jones family and the Hudson-Hummels were invited. I wasn’t close with the Changs, but I was close with the Cohens, so Michael would be coming as Tina’s plus one. I wasn’t close with the Zizes or the Andersons, but I knew that Lauren would be attending with Finn and Blaine with Kurt. The Evans and Puckerman-Altmans were partially invited because I considered their sons to be very much the kids of my heart.

I tried to get William to see how amazing Mercedes’ voice was from the very first time I heard her sing. I wish I had been stronger back then. Noah, he’d been a sweetheart to me even before he joined the New Directions. He hated to show how good his heart was…but I still remembered the young freshman football player who’d been kind to me in the teacher parking lot on the second day of school his very first year at McKinley. My lunch bag had gotten caught in my car door and ripped spilling my lunch and sending some of it rolling under my car. I was almost in tears. Noah came over and he crawled under my car to get my bottle of water and my apple. I did thank him profusely, but I confessed that I’d never be able to eat the apple after it had rolled on the ground. Later that morning, he showed up at the door to my office with a lovely, large Honeycrisp apple. He didn’t have to get that for me. I knew it hadn’t come from the cafeteria, which meant he’d snuck off campus to get it. He refused to allow me to pay him back or anything. Sam…he was a different story, not that he was any less special…just he’d come later and for him, it wasn’t his talent or his kindness that had created the basis for our friendship…it was actually his fear.

Sam Evans had started at McKinley scared as hell. With his learning disability, I’d had his file well in advance and met with him during the football training camp he’d attend before the first day of school. He had not been in a public education setting since he was in elementary school…and though he tried to hide it, he was scared to death. Scared of the unknown, scared of the failure…worried about what success even looked like let alone if he could actually achieve it. As a person who was almost literally afraid of air, his fears touched me. But maybe even more than that, his determination in the face of his fears emboldened me. Yes, the original six New Directions…or the Muppet Babies as Kurt had once called them…they were my favorites among the many students I’d counseled during my tenure at McKinley. But Sam, Mercedes and Noah…they were special in their own right.

I shook off those thoughts as Mercedes came over and gave me a hug. “I’m so happy for you.” she said with a huge smile.

“Thank you,” I responded with a smile of my own. “You know if it weren’t for the three of you, Hal and I would never have met. So, I definitely want to thank you.”

“Happy to be of help.” She said cheekily. “I’ll dance at your wedding.” She teased.

Sam had overheard and added in, “I like you too much to do that to you, so I’ll just stick to singing.” He teased. 

While I was talking to Santana, Mercedes and then Sam, Puck had cornered Hal. My Darling fiancé told me of their interchange on our way back to Cincinnati. “You know, your kid Puck…he thinks the world of you. He cornered me and said that since I was putting a ring on it, he wanted to make sure that I knew what he’d do to me if I ever raised a hand to you in anger.”

“Oh no, he didn’t.” I groaned.

Hal smiled gently. “Oh of course he did. He cares about you. Sam gave me a speech when we first started dating seriously. His was a rough estimation of the usual shovel speech. Hurt her at your peril…he has a shotgun, a shovel and access to over seven hundred acres of land…they’d never find all of me. that kind of thing.”

“Good Lord.” I breathed. “How violent.”

“It wasn’t a bad speech. It was even kind of traditional. Puck’s tonight…it was a tale of beauty. He told me about how Haja’s brother does something similar to what I do for Rangeman and if I were to ever raise a hand to you in anger, Puck could and would hire him to hold me down so Puck could cut the offending appendage off. Then said appendage would be force fed to me. From there things got a little dark.”

“A little dark?” I squeaked. “How could it get darker than amputation and forced cannibalism?”

“I’m not going to tell you.” Hal smiled gently. “But he is going to email me the whole thing if we ever have a daughter.”

I chuckled. “He probably is testing it out on you for use when his own adorable daughters start dating.”

“Probably.” We shared a long laugh. “I’m still surprised that you managed to get your sisters to let you ride back with me…it technically being our wedding day and everything.”

“Well, Janie is seven months pregnant with twins again. She managed to fall asleep twice during the convert. And one of those was during ‘Shakin’ My Head’.” Hal looked impressed. That was a pretty raucous song. It was hard not to dance to, let alone actually sleeping through. “So, when I told George and Rosalyn to go ahead and take her on back to Cincinnati after the concert and Betty and I’d catch a ride home. And we did. Ram, Tank and Ella are giving Betty a ride in their Yukon and I’m riding with you.”

“I’m glad.” He said gently drawing up the hand that was nestled in his to his lips. The rest of our hour and a half ride was passed in companionable silence, listening to the CD we’d gotten from the concert. We both already owned all KAMA’s CDs, but we hadn’t thought of bringing our hard copies with us and we knew we’d probably want them at some point over the next couple of weeks. One or the other of us listened to at least three or four of the songs on a daily basis. Hal would never tell a soul, but when he was feeling particularly romantic, he liked to make love with ‘Slow Hand’ on repeat in the background. Our record was a full twenty-three repetitions. Our little caravan all arrived back at the Renaissance around two forty and we all headed up to our rooms.

I showered, washing my hair and leaving Avlon KeraCare overnight moisturizing treatment on it as I slept. The hair mask was something I did before all the major events in my life. I was a creature of habits. I slept very well considering that I was alone in the large hotel bed. But I’d disinfected the sheets and recovered the pillows with my own cases, so it was quite comfortable. When I awoke I bleached out the tub, the hotel maid was kind enough to lend me her supplies. A long relaxing bath was followed by a nice shower, where I removed the mask and used lukewarm water and a baby shampoo to remove the residue. After carefully moisturizing my entire body, I called down and ordered breakfast for myself. Steel cut oatmeal, with clarified butter, honey and berries on the side along with two scrambled eggs, three strips of peppercorn bacon and a full carafe of water with lemon. I was full but not bloated. I enjoyed the peace and quiet with just myself and some music playing quietly in the background. For both of my previous attempts at marriage, my mornings had been filled with noise. I didn’t find that as enlivening as most women seemed to. So, this time no one was arriving to help me start to get ready before noon. I’d given myself three hours of peace.

Twenty minutes before the noon hour, I had paid quite a pretty penny for a beautiful set of Lise Charmel Orchide Paradis ivory lingerie to wear under my dress. I donned those and a beautiful silk robe that had been dry cleaned by the same cleaner who did all of my non-machine washable clothing. I headed to the door and let in my mother, who was ten minutes early, as I expected. She and I had a nice quite wait for the rest of the ladies. “I like your Harold, Dear. You’ve chosen well this time.” She told me quietly as we sat just enjoying the peace and quiet.

I couldn’t help but agree. By fifteen minutes after noon, Shannon, Shelby, Stephanie, Betty, Cheryl and Elise had joined Mommy and I. Stephanie had arranged for lunch for everyone. The shrimp, avocado and broccoli salads were accompanied by mimosas and more of the water with lemon to maintain our hydration. Lunch was beyond delicious and we had some great conversation during it. But by one, it was time to get the show on the road. I pulled on a button front light beige shirt dress and made sure that I had my shoes and jewelry and all the things I needed to take to the church with me. I checked my phone and was unsurprised to see that Hal had texted me at nine. “I cannot wait to marry you, Emma. Thank you for loving me.” I was so happy that I read that before I had my makeup done. I texted him back my own joy at the idea of being his forever and then it was time to go.

The ladies were a flurry of conversation and teasing as we rode down and headed to the church where our hair and makeup was done and the ladies put on their pink or pewter Lela Rose sleeveless cocktail dresses. When Stephanie had realized that her bridesmaid dress had pockets, she’d called me squealing in happiness. I’d really searched long and hard to find a dress that would look good on the five very different women and yet be something that they really enjoyed wearing. I had picked very natural makeup looks for all of us and had picked hair styles for my bridesmaids that would work with Stephanie and Betty’s curly hair. I knew from past mistakes that it was definitely easier to curl straight hair than it was to straighten curly hair. So, the hairstyle I picked was a curly updo. The photographer had arrived and Kurt had made sure that everything was going properly in the main portion of the church. At a little before three thirty, I was helped into my ivory Kenneth Winston, strapless, Crepe Georgette lace trumpet gown and the cotton French lace capelet which was fitted around the neck, and longer at the back than the front. I didn’t feel like a princess like I had in the dress I’d picked to wear to marry Ken. I didn’t feel like Audrey Hepburn, like I had in the dress I’d worn when I had married Carl, thank God for Annulments. No, the dress I wore to marry Hal…it made me feel like a grown woman who was the best Emma Pillsbury the world had ever known.

The photographer took some beautiful pictures of Shannon helping me with my blue topaz jewelry or Mommy helping me with my veil. It was all quite perfect. The whole evening was perfect. The ceremony started promptly at five. It was lovely and beautiful. Kurt made sure that every single moment went as smoothly as silk. The processional was lovely. Stephanie celebrated when she made it to the front without tripping or anything…but I knew that was because my line up had paired her with Ranger. Not that I would ever say that to her. As Connor and Ciaran made their way down, Daddy gave me a small smile. “I don’t feel like I want to take you and run as far from this church as fast as I can this time. Your Hal is a fine man, Mermaid. He loves you almost enough to make me believe that he deserves you.”

I could only give him a strong, happy hug as the music started to swell. And Daddy escorted me down the aisle and into my future. I could see the love shining in Hal’s beautiful blue eyes as I reached him and the rest of the world fell away. I said the things that I needed to say in the appropriate places. I heard Mercedes beautiful voice raised in ‘Ava Maria’. I heard Hal’s deep, wonderful voice accept me as his wife as I accepted him as my husband. Time care roaring back to me as my heartbeat returned to normal after Hal and I kissed for the first time as man and wife. Sam, Mercedes and Noah serenaded us as we made our way down the aisle of the church and out to be pelted with rice as we headed to a limo which drove us Riverview Park. We took our wedding party pictures in the scenic park while the four charter buses Hal had arranged shuttled our guests from Christ Church Cathedral to the Monastery Event Center where our reception was being held.

The reception went amazingly well. We decided against a full bar, instead we had beer, wine, champagne and two signature cocktails, lemongrass ginger martinis and Manhattans. We did have a sit-down dinner, but we kept it to three simple courses. A salad of mixed field greens, English cucumber, tear-drop tomatoes, shaved red onion, ruby red beets, with Capri farms goat cheese crumbles and citrus vinaigrette on the side. Followed by a main course of either pan-seared all-natural chicken breast drizzled with a balsamic glaze, and served with wild mushroom risotto cake and asparagus or grilled swordfish steak brushed with tomato butter and paired with roasted corn with charred green onion sweet butter, thyme-roasted red bliss potatoes. The final option, which my dad had insisted on for some reason, was roast sirloin of beef, those who chose it enjoyed with roasted root vegetables and fingerling potatoes. Thankfully there had been no unexpected additions to the guest list and everyone had RSVPed with their dinner choices. It all went swimmingly.

As their wedding gift, Commune had leant us their DJ CA$$. In addition to the songs we’d selected for our special dances, she played a lovely arrangement of songs from my and Hal’s birth years and the years we graduated high school and college and officer training school…it was very beautiful. We waltzed to Ingrid Michaelson’s ‘The Way I Am’, it spoke to us because we truly loved each other exactly as we each were. The rest of the evening was a complete blur of joy and dancing and the amazing vanilla bean and Chantilly cream wedding cake and more dancing. It was the best night of our lives. Both Hal and I thanked everyone for sharing our joy with us then the limo took us back to the Renaissance while the shuttles returned those who were sober to their cars and those who weren’t to the Residence Inn, where they could get a room and sleep off their drink.

Kurt had even ensured that Hal and my bags made it from our separate rooms to our Executive King suite where we spent our first night as man and wife. It was mainly spent sleeping, we were exhausted and we had to be up and out early the next morning, our flight left at ten so we needed to be at the airport by seven thirty. We made it, primarily because my mother, George and Rosalyn in addition to Hal’s mother and brothers all came to our room as we were trying to figure out how to get everything out the room without leaving our wedding apparel and stuff in the Tahoe at the airport while we were gone. They took charge of getting all of that handled…which worked because Mommy and Daddy were taking our wedding gifts back to the condo for us. Hal had some serious documentation for traveling internationally, but it allowed us to seemingly fly through the security checkpoints. It was then that I learned we were flying to London. We spent the next eleven days touring through Europe then we spent three days touring Ireland before we returned to London and flew home.

It was a beautiful honeymoon and when we got home we finally opened our wedding gifts. Among the usual homes goods, which I’d dutifully registered for, we found our gift from Hal’s friends and coworkers at Rangeman. Hal and I had tried to find a place that I would be comfortable moving into, but it hadn’t worked and to be honest, Hal hated the thought of buying something other people had lived in first as much as I did. So, we’d agreed that when we got back from our amazing honeymoon, we’d start looking for a piece of land in the same areas…townships no more than forty-five minutes from Columbus or an hour from Lima. The men of Rangeman, and it was just the men because Ella and Stephanie had each given us a setting of the exquisite china I’d selected, they had purchased for Hal and me a three-acre lot on Lincoln Place in North Lewisburg. It had already been cultivated for water and sewer and all the rest of the utilities, so it was just a matter of getting the right plans and building our dream home. I couldn’t wait until it was finished, knowing that once our dream home was done we’d be able to start our family.

Of course, a very wise person once said that when men plan…God laughs.

 

Mom (Garth Brooks)  
Shelby Cochran-Martinez PoV

Many people were absolutely content with their lives and considered themselves to be lucky. I could understand that. Seven years ago, I’d been one of them. I was perfectly fine living my content life. But then I’d made the best choice ever…to adopt my Bethany. From there it seemed as if even my desperation choices, like returning to Lima so that I could be close…but not too close…to family, and taking a job at McKinley, they had been leading me down the road from contentment to happiness. Now, I understood that I wasn’t merely lucky, I was actually blessed. I was no longer just content, I was gloriously, amazingly, happy. I was over forty and while technically I was still renting rather than buying, I lived with most of the people I loved…with my family. My parents were still alive, whole, healthy and able to live on their own. I was a female over forty in a world where age and gender discrimination were ridiculously prevalent. But I had a job that I enjoyed getting up every morning to do, one which made a difference in the lives of those I taught. I had the kind of job security that most people could only dream of. I was married to an incredible man. And David knew exactly who I was and loved me anyway. I had my daughter, who was delightfully talented and incredibly smart. Almost scarily so. Quinn and Noah were both very intelligent, but we were all pretty sure that Beth, like her older sister Nikolette, was genus level gifted. I had more real true friends than I’d ever before had in my life. Primarily because I hoarded the true friends I’d been blessed with like a dragon hoarded gold. I still called my best friend from high school once a week and tried to see Maureen in person at least once a year.

But the love I maintained for my old friends didn’t mean that I didn’t value my new friends just as much. I was so honored when Emma asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. I knew that she didn’t make friends easily and that Shannon, Sue and I were the closest ones she’d had in a very long time. Emma had asked Shannon, who she had been closer to for longer than she’d been to me or Sue. Sue had told her that she would come and she would dance and make merry, “but no way in hell are you putting me in some nightmare of a dress and forcing me to stand there in heels and all the other bullshit that bridesmaids have to do.” She’d told Emma with no hesitation. Me, I said yes, the second she asked me.

I might have made the cut since Emma did have a sister she was somewhat close to but Jane had bit been able to accept the honor. She had let Emma know that she was pregnant with twins, for a second time, and would not be able to be a bridesmaid as soon as she was asked, which I respected. When I found out I was pregnant, I went immediately to Emma and asked her if she wanted the chance to choose another woman for the honor and even offered to give them my dress so they would just have to get it altered, which I still had to do anyway. But she said no and I served her to the very best of my ability. I was showing, but the alterations of the pearl pink, bateau necked, deep v backed bridesmaid’s dress hid the baby bump well. I was only five months along, but I was visibly pregnant. Happily, glowingly, visibly pregnant.

I wasn’t expecting to get pregnant at forty-four years old. Having a biological child wasn’t even on our radar. No matter what I’d said to Rachel, I had quite honestly believed that my child bearing years were behind me. David and I had talked about adopting another child. But we had decided to wait until after our first anniversary to begin the process. I’d been on birth control my entire adult life. Of course, I knew that certain antibiotics and hormonal birth control were completely non-mixy things. And yet in all the excitement of getting ready for our honeymoon, it never even entered my mind to go and get my shot readministered after I completed the antibiotics for the upper respiratory infection that I’d gotten when Beth’s cold mutated as it crossed the age barrier. I was a firm believer that everything children caught mutated when it infected the adults around the kid. But that was neither here nor there. My pregnancy was a perfect storm of events. The surprise gift of the spectacular Caribbean honeymoon, the antibiotics usage, David not thinking to buy or bring any condoms. Granted, there was also the fact that we acted like teenagers for the whole six or seven days we were there. We literally did nothing but eat, sleep and make love…and there were a few times when we chose to make love rather than eating or sleeping.

So, perhaps, it wasn’t all that shocking that I ended up pregnant. I wasn’t expecting to be expecting, but both David and I were overjoyed about it. I had to admit that I thought it only right to let Rachel know before the news got out and she learned it from someone other than me. I’d gotten more sincere congratulations for my pregnancy from Amazon when I signed up for their baby registry. It didn’t bother me. I cared about her, if she needed a kidney and I could give her one, I would, but she wasn’t my child. If I’d maintained in my heart and mind Rachel as my child…I’d have lost my mind before she was two. I’d have driven myself crazy worrying and wondering and hoping things I had no right to think and hope. Beth was my child and when I told her about the pregnancy, she was amazingly enthusiastic. So were Quinn and Francine.

The Sisters Fabray were seriously happy about my pregnancy. Almost to the point that I worried that Francine might have rethought her decision to go to Yale for her doctorate program to stay nearby. But I assured her that I would make sure the baby knew his or her Auntie Frannie, just like Beth did and that seemed to help. Quinn and I, we spent that summer helping each other. David and I decided to be surprised by the baby’s gender, so I found planning out the nursery enjoyable, but more complex than I would have if I’d known. At the same time Quinn was, in her spare time, looking through a million websites trying to furnish the house she and her friends were buying in New Haven. She helped my pick the stain for George to create a masterpiece of a crib, and I helped her pick furniture for their basement lounge area. She helped me decide on a gender non-specific theme for the nursery and I helped her figure out what pieces she could get from Ikea and which ones really needed to be purchased from a furniture store where assembly and setup was part of delivery.

I truly enjoyed working with Quinn on her not so little project. We talked at great length. We learned things we’d never known about each other. She and I talked about ethics, and the circumvention of rules without harming our own personal ethics. We laughed a lot; sometimes at each other but mostly with each other. One of the conversations seemed to settle in her mind that no matter if David and I had one child or twenty, we would always love and Beth and more importantly to Quinn, we’d never treat her any differently. Given what I knew of Quinn’s early years and her non-relationship with her mother, it wasn’t surprising that she would be concerned that we might prioritize the new baby, a biological child, above Beth. But I was confident that neither David or I would every allow that to happen.

When I thought about it, I had a lot of fun that summer. In addition to my foray into interior design, I’d visited a couple of amusement parks. Not only had I gone with KAMA and crew but David, Beth and I had gone to Kings Island with his parents, siblings and nieces and nephews for an entire weekend. I was pretty sure that by the end of her time with her Martinez cousins, aunts and uncles…Beth spoke better Spanish better than poor Will ever had. She’d had a blast and gotten almost as spoiled by her new grandparents as she did by her Abah, Papa and MeDe. That was a great weekend, surpassed only by the weekend when we got to go to Six Flags Great America and witness James proposing to Quinn. There was something truly lovely about that relationship. James had helped Quinn to not only grow past the trauma and drama in her history, but he’d helped her grow without allowing himself to become a clichéd Captain Save-a-ho. They were not what many people would consider a traditional couple and yet the love between them was the very definition of a true, traditional, partnership. I was overjoyed and filled with pride for the two of them.

I was also outrageously proud of Mercedes, Sam and Noah. I’d had successful proteges before, one of my former Adrenaline Junkies had been a top five finalist on American Idol and another had been in leading roles on Broadway for the last several years. Still none of them had even come close to the success of Commune. But it wasn’t just the level of success that they had attained that made me proud. Their level of showmanship was something to behold. I’d attended two of their concerts in the same region and in the same month and yet I’d truly felt like each one was a different experience. That could be difficult for even more seasoned acts to achieve and usually they did so by varying their set list and trading out songs from their catalog, once they had four or five CDs under their belts. But Commune was giving their audiences every single one of their songs every show. It made their fans really happy and gave them all evenings that had kept hashtagAETOUR and hashtagKAMA trending on Twitter and Instagram all summer.

Of course, no matter what people may have believed, teachers did have to work during the summers and I was no exception. With my place at McKinley secured and Sue Sylvester a very willing partner to my quest to win another championship, I’d made a few small changes to the way the New Directions was run. I’d begun by going to the feeder middle schools and holding auditions a few weeks before nationals. Just as I’d have done if they were trying out after the start of the new school year, I’d had those rising ninth graders who were interested in joining the show choir had to sing one prepared song and one song of my choosing. From Harrison Middle School, I’d gotten seven, including Sarah Puckerman; who hadn’t really had a choice about trying out… she was family. I’d only gotten four new members from Taft Middle but the new eleven voices were strong and they more than made up for the nine members who’d graduated that May.

I’d also taken a note from Sue and Shannon’s books. I’d gotten very lucky. Benton and Danica were taking Beth with them on ‘the great Jeverman clan KAMA following roadtrip’ the same week that I had scheduled my New Directions Boot Camp. I was holding my camp the week before the Cheerios and Titan’s camps. The camp was primarily aimed at helping the incoming freshman begin the process of bonding and becoming New Directions, so they had to be there by ten Monday morning. However, my secondary goal was to spend some time helping those kids whose talent was not quite on the same level as their drive or enthusiasm. Those kids would arrive between three and four on Monday afternoon. The rest of the more veteran New Directions all arrived by ten on Tuesday. I had a great group that year. The seniors included Jake, who had gotten back from trailing the AE Tour. He even sang on one of the stops and went to the Teen Choice Awards. He would be beating the ladies off with a stick. He, Riley, the Cass Twins, Hell, Ivy and Marley made up my senior core. Marley was still with the group and she attended the camp, but nothing anyone could do seemed to get her to really BE a part of the group. She just held herself apart and didn’t want to be friends with the rest of the choir. I couldn’t force more from her than she was willing to give Fortunately, my talent wasn’t consolidated in just the seniors. Roderick, Jane, even Alistair and Spenser were all really quite good. I was looking for a song that would be perfect for a Jane and Jake or duet and another for Roderick and Hell. The rising sophomores were…well a lot of them had joined the club because they were very much driven and determined to follow in KAMA’s footsteps and assumed that I’d be the gate way to stardom.

Zion Cooper and Myron Muskovitz were the leaders of that crew. The two guys had a small group of four girls that were all just as driven and all just as ambitious. Thankfully, none of them truly lacked talent. They just were less gifted than they believed themselves to be. None of them were as memorable as they were sure they were. I tended to call them Sparkle Baby, Cleavage, Velma and Roxie. Sparkle Baby loved shiny things and was easily distracted. Cleavage was very top heavy and she knew it. I was fairly certain that she held the record for the most dress code violation of any freshman to ever before attend McKinley High. Velma and Roxie were nicknamed after Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart. They were both really, really, really into Broadway. They were as dark and light as their namesakes and they fought each other like a cat and dog, each trying to be declared the alpha bitch of the pack. I wasn’t sure why they thought they had a chance. I was fairly certain that Zion and Myron really only had eyes for each other. Not that there was anything wrong with that…except that much conceit and ego in one relationship could not be healthy.

I was very grateful for the final three rising sophomores. Judith Totah was an amazing dancer who could carry a tune and loved being part of the choir. She wasn’t shy like Ivy, but she didn’t want to sparkle and shine…she wanted to build and support. Alison Crews was a very interesting young lady. Much like Regina and Chase, she was more interested in one day ruling the world and the New Directions was just a rung up her ladder. She was smart as hell and good at reading a crowd and people in general. The final rising sophomore was a young man who did not want to be in the show choir at all. Tristan Kane had a nice voice. He was a strong tenor, just edging into bass. He was the youngest of four boys and his mother was pretty much determined that he was going to be her gay son that she did all those fun gay son things with when he finally came out. There was one problem with that. Tristan was severely heterosexual. In fact, he was so heterosexual that he put up with Cleavage on a daily basis just because she had breasts which were, I was almost positive, as big as Finn Hudson’s head. Still, he stuck it out, probably because of Cleavage and making his mother not-unhappy. The three of them were a good balance to the drama that seemed inherent in the other six.

Even as the size of the New Directions grew, I made sure not to fall back into old bad habits. Everyone who had the talent got time to shine during competitions and those who were ambitious and driven…I worked with them until they were, at the very least closer to being as good as they thought they were. I had a total of thirty-four student singers and I made sure that I gave them all as much attention as I could. In the camp, there were fifteen boys and nineteen girls and given their ages, I knew that I needed at least another set of chaperones. Given that Cleavage was what Danica called a fast-tailed little girl, I compelled her parents, Otto and Marlene Zueck, to be the other chaperones. Since we had the whole school to ourselves, we were also able to put the girls in Hall A and the boys in gym…meaning we kept them as far apart as humanly possible whenever we weren’t doing dance drills or vocal fundamental exercises. We even kept them separated during the stamina builder exercises. Marlene and I decided to sleep on cots with air mattresses on them against the breezeway and main hall doors to make sure that no one snuck in or out. Granted, we also took turns keeping watch over the heathens so that we could each have a little alone time with our husbands during the week…but we made it work.

I was very, very, very happy when I was able to sleep in my bed again. And that I had some time to recover before Beth got back from my parents. They had scooped her up for a weekend as soon as she got back from road tripping with the Jevermans. It was certainly one of the more interesting summers I’d ever had. I had much to look forward to that coming fall. But every single day I awoke in David’s arms was wonderful. I never lied and said that we were a perfect couple. There was no such a thing. But we were great friends, great lovers, great caretakers and we fought the same way. People always think that in good or even great marriages the couple doesn’t fight. That is impossible. Two people, even if they are completely compatible and love each other, are not going to agree on every subject. It was the manner in which they fought, the feelings that were hurt, the apologies that were rendered…those were what made it possible for the couple to move forward together. David and I both fought the same way. We tended not to lose our tempers in a loud expression of anger, instead getting colder and colder…more and more analytical and logical as we assessed our opponent to find what would work. We dug in deeply enough to get our point across and with others we could and often did go straight for the jugular. However, we each made sure not to do that with each other or with those we truly loved. We were both very aware that there was nothing that could be undone, no words that could be unsaid…but there were apologies and reparations. We also acknowledged that there were some actions that could not be made right and some words that can never be forgiven. Our symmetry in how we argued allowed us to navigate that minefield better than a lot of other people we knew.

Francine, in finding herself desirous of a long term, productive relationship, asked me to tell her how it was that I knew that David and I were compatible enough for the long haul. “On the surface, David and I are very different. We come from different backgrounds. We are different races, yet when you get to the root of who we are as people, there you find the more important similarities. Yes, David never wanted to be anything but a teacher. I found my way to teaching by a more circular path. But we both found the ultimate satisfaction in helping young people learn and develop and reach their fullest potentials. David is an agnostic catholic who goes to Mass with his mother whenever he can’t get out of it because he both loves and fears her. I am a High Holiday Jew who goes to temple for exactly the same reason. We shared similar tastes in literature and both love broad swaths of musical genres. We share similar hobbies and ideal leisure time activities. Our personalities mesh well and our faults complement each other. But the truth was that we’d have never found all that out if we’d allowed the superficial differences to keep us from taking the time to get to know each other.”

“I get all that, I mean, I can see most of what you just said by spending the last few summers with you two. I guess I asked the wrong question. I think I should have asked, how did you know that David was worth getting to know? There is this guy that I met in Chicago and I feel like there is some invisible connection between us, but if I really want to have the time and energy to put towards getting to know him better, I’ll need to go to Columbia rather than Yale and I’m running out of time to make the final decision.” She told me honestly.

I thought about what she was asking for a moment. “I guess in this case, you already seem to feel that your person of interest is worth getting to know. You just don’t know if he is worth making an adjustment to your trajectory. So, tell me…why do you prefer Yale to Columbia?”

Frannie shrugged. “I know that both schools are similar in terms of prestige and academic quality, I kind of feel that the Columbia program is somewhat traditional and a little too rigid for my taste. Yet by the same turn, Yale just has this overtly snooty air that will be hard to get used to after Ann Arbor. I feel like Columbia’s somewhat less cozy than Yale because of its proximity to NYC. But then again, I’d be in New York…even if I chose not to live in Manhattan proper, I’d still be close enough to all the shopping and Broadway. But I won’t be all that close to Quinn. Besides, my admissions officer at Columbia was without a doubt the most unpleasant grad school representative I've ever encountered.”

“You can visit Quinn and she can visit you. It’s less than a two-hour drive. As for the admissions person, you’ll never see them again. Now, I know that when you were deciding where to apply, you were mostly interested in Yale because it was ranked number two for clinical psychology in the nation. If that hasn’t changed then you should go to Yale and try just having a friendship with the guy until you finish your degree. You can always go to med school at Columbia since their medical program is closer in rankings to Yale’s than their clinical psych programs. Trust me, if this guy feels the same connection you felt and he is really worth the time and energy, then he wants you to do what is best for you and your future…not just what might feel good right now.” I advised.

“I know you’re right. I think I just needed to hear it said out loud. You know?” I agreed and we talked a little longer. “I do think that I want to get my own apartment in New Haven. Quinn suggested I joined her and her friends, but I don’t think I can live with roommates again.” She confessed.

One of the things I respected most about both Quinn and Francine was that when they made up their minds, they moved on things with swiftness and determination. Our conversation was held the Tuesday after Emma’s wedding. By the time I got home from Boot Camp, Frannie, her father and his lawyer had made all the arrangements to rent a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment a short drive from campus and a short drive to Quinn’s house. It was even semi-furnished. I was so happy for her. I still wanted to kick Russel Fabray in the balls a few times…but he was still better than his ex-wife. Her, I’d set on fire if I could get away with it.

Still, as summer started the inevitable fade into fall…I couldn’t help but look forward to the future and all it would hopefully bring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small Rant...I am so tired of cis, healthy, hetero, white males telling people how Trump's actions this week aren't really that bad. How under Obamacare, they saw their premiums rise and their plans change without acknowledging that their plans changed because they were junk plans to begin with and their premiums went up because the plans they now had actually covered something other than the most nominal care.   
> I'm tired of those same males saying that they shouldn't have to cover 'women's care issues' like pregnancy since it doesn't apply to them. Yes, because eggs spontaneously fertilize themselves.   
> Or how abortion is so wrong, but somehow so is preventing conception in the first place. Which is...A...stupid and...B...asinine. Like there aren't other medically necessary reasons women have to take hormonal BC pills, including to regulating periods and endometriosis care...but again these Cis-Gender White Males think that women should have no control over their own bodies. And that only promiscuous women 'need birth control' as if women always have the option of turning down sex. We Should!!!! but there are always men who think that their maleness and desire for intercourse trumps a woman's right to say no.   
> Then again those same Cis-Healthy-Hetero-White-Males seem to want to regulate everything about the bodies of women and PoC...but if we try to institute sensible gun regulations because too many people of all ages, genders and ethnicities have died due to gun violence...suddenly regulation is bad and must be avoided at all cost. 
> 
> So, I say today, we Americans with good sense take action...We on the left need to stop letting those on the right divide and conquer us. We need to stand together and do everything in our power to compel sensible gun regulations, the full and complete re-institution of the ACA shored up by the strengthening of the mandates and marketplaces and the expansions of Medicaid and Medicare that the Taxpayers of America deserve. That we stop allowing those morons to play politics with out lives. CALL, WRITE, DEMAND ACTION!!!
> 
> Oh yeah and please Read & Comment. Thank You  
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	13. Sweet Baby (Macy Gray) & Welcome to the Future (Brad Paisley)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look into BARTANA's Summer on the AE TOUR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!  
> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.  
> Thanks to DaughterofDarkness87 for her awesome beta-skills.

Chapter 13

Sweet Baby (Macy Gray)  
Santana PoV

I had my shit together and I knew it. I was pretty damn proud of myself the summer after my sophomore year of college. My relationship was going strong. My family life was fucking boss. We had dinner at least once a month with one part of my fam or the other. We saw my Abuelo, Tito, every week. Primarily because if I wanted to see my favorite aunt and uncle, I had to see the old man. Not that it was a hardship, my Abuelo was pretty much exactly like me. He’d been far more understanding of my sexuality than my father’s mom had. It’d taken her a minute to come around. But the again Tito was pretty chill and damn near a sex addict, himself. Abuelita was very, very religious. She attended mass every single morning and says her rosary, like, three times a day. Besides, once Artie entered the picture and her hope for great-grandchildren was revived…she stopped giving me the speeches and depressing sighs. Not that she and Artie got along…nope…not even a little bit. The fact that she’d tried to sell me when I was little, and the fact that she called me Garbage Face for five years…those were not things Artie was willing to forgive. They were also the reasons that Tito couldn’t stand her either. And they weren’t things that she ever saw a problem with having done.

My school shit was going every bit as strong as my family and relationship. I wasn’t taking the ridiculous course load that Trouty, Wheezy and Puck had…so, I was handling my course load well pretty easily. If I kept my shit together, I’d graduate with both my major and minor right on time and ready to take the world by storm. And I was going to take the world by storm, too. In all the after parties and award shows, the team at Warner and all three members of KAMA had made sure that I made all the right connections. I’d met the heads of a boat load of the labels that were all under the umbrella of the Warner Music Group. I’d been introduced to touring musicians who would be nearing the end of their current contracts around the time I graduated from NYU. I’d been introduced to another image consultant, but that broad hadn’t been able to dress herself, so what on earth could she have been able to tell me. But I hadn’t said that to her face. I was even invited to the MTV Video Music Awards as myself with two additional tickets for my man and our woman. I’d started agonizing over what to wear immediately, but Ruth reminded me that I had access to an award-winning stylist so I shouldn’t worry. When she was right, she was right I’d given her my idea for a thruple ‘theme’ and allowed her to do what she did best. When I thought about it all, I was proud of how seriously I was taking the build up to my career.

I was pretty proud of most of the things in my life. I had my boos. I had my future career well on track. Like, ridiculously, well on track. Mike Caren of Elektra said that he and Lyor had discussed which of the many sub-labels of Warner would be the best fit for me and Elektra Records was waiting on me whenever I was ready to get my shit started. I already had my whole management structure in place…because I was using Gala-Nipple, Trouty and Zilla’s Team. Hey, they were damn good at what they did and they said I didn’t have a choice but to use them. Which would usually annoy me and make me determined to use anyone but them, but I was stubborn, not stupid. Brittany and I had talked and once I was ready to get my career started, she would work with Commune and make sure that they had someone in her place and she was going to leave them to dance with and for me. Rainbow was trying to make sure that by the time that time came, Britts would be an accredited choreographer as well. For the first year, while we got things all stabilized and running smoothly, Artie was going to head my band in the same way Dave headed KAMA’s. I didn’t trust that I’d be as lucky as Commune had been in finding the right people from the word jump. My hubby would watch out for the band dynamics…make sure that there was a solid unit in place. Once we had everybody in place like they needed to be, then he was going to direct my videos and KAMAs when they wanted him to do it too. We had it all planned out. The music videos were going to be Artie’s spring board for getting into television and-slash-or movies. As me and Artie were getting ready to start our junior year of college, we were focusing on our major classes and making sure that we had the cred to start our careers after graduation.

Outside of that, Artie, Britt-Brat and I owned our own home. Yup, we’d done it with a lot of help from our parents…not monetarily, we had that handled. In fact, by the time the construction mortgage had been converted over to a regular mortgage, we’d already cut it down by more than half. When we saw that our monthly mortgage payments were under eight hundred bucks, we decided to each pay eight hundred bucks meaning that we were paying twenty-four hundred dollars towards our mortgage every month, and we gave them the bulk of our bonuses after the Valentine show…which was almost a hundred grand. At the same time, we made sure to sock away the funds for Mami would need to get the house furnished and decorated. I didn’t believe for a moment that she wouldn’t put in on it if there was something she wanted us to have that was outside our current budget, but we were trying to make everything happen by ourselves. We needed to start adulting. Damn it…Darcy was infecting my vocabulary. 

Britts and Artie were more than happy with our progress on the payments. Partially because with some of the extra in the escrow account, George had gone ahead and installed an inground, six-person hot tub that was fenced in and accessible only from our master bedroom. It also meant that the next summer or maybe the one after next, we’d be able to start installing our pool. The maybe was because I was advocating for an indoor heated pool and we’d need longer to save for that but the way I saw it, we had nothing but time on our sides. We all knew that Baby Boy Puckerman wasn’t yet to the place where he would be able to do our pool design and part of us wanted to wait until we could give him the work. I knew that was what Commune was waiting on before they added a pool to their ridiculously large mansion in Lima. And it also made sense to wait until we’d be able to spend more time at the house. But then again, technically, we’d started making plans to install a pool before we ever even saw the blueprints. And everyone who’d ever even met me knew I was not a patient person.

In fact, I was pretty sure that we’d done a lot of stuff ‘wrong’ in the whole home building process. We hadn’t even seen the final floor plans until Gwen had approved them. Then Mami made like she was the long-lost Property Sister. Whenever there was a design choice to be made, or at least the ones she wanted us to have to make, we got exactly three options. The one she wanted us to use, one that she was willing to allow us to use and one so god-awful ugly she’d have disowned all three of us if we tried to pick it. She and Melanie and Roger made the bulk of them in accordance with Gwen and Sander’s rules for Artie compliance in all rooms. Like how all the floors throughout the split-ranch style house were Brazilian Walnut. With its super high Janka hardness rating, it would stand up to Artie’s chair the best. But we were allowed to choose the width of the plank we liked best and we got to decide between the lighter sapwood and darker heartwood. Mami was even magnanimous enough to let us pick the natural stone tiles and the metal type we wanted for the fixtures in the bathrooms. But that was about as far as that went.

I did have to admit that the parents made sure to educate us on the whys and hows of the floor plans and the fixtures and everything that was chosen. It wasn’t exactly news to us. Artie had lived a decade in a chair and I’d done a metric shit ton of reading when we were getting ready to move to New York. And in the years since, I’d found this great blog called the ‘Mad Spaz Club’ for people with spinal cord injuries or who were in wheelchairs for other reasons. I’d hipped Mami to it too…and hoped and prayed that she took the hint. Ultimately, it took the Superior Step-Dad, George Altman, just under nine months, start to finish to build our ‘Love Shack’. Not that it was a shack. That bad boy was a four bed-three and half bath suburban delight of a house, with a study that Papi reminded me would make a great nursery one day and three car garage with enough undedicated tool and storage space that Mami enclosed a sixty-four-square foot room that could be enclosed storage or it could and probably would be an editing bay. God knew she and George’s electrician dude guy had put in enough outlets and shit.

We didn’t know how things turned out until we got to Ohio for the two tour stops we had in our home state. We knew that we’d have three guest rooms and a pull-out couch in the study though. With those and the fact that Pippy-no-Stockings, Teen Jesus, Boy and Girl Asian, Lil Bird’s Daddy, and Closet-Case all had their parents’ homes to stay at, and Sugar’s house was big enough to have its own zip code, and Puck, Aretha and Trouty’s big ass house had more rooms than a little bit, we told Huds to cancel the hotel rooms and everyone could rest their weary heads in the comforts of actual homes. It all worked out easily. Teen Jesus took Brunette Beethoven home with him. Mikey-Boy took the Limey into the Chang family guest room. Sugar opened her home to Naw’Oleans and Bow-Tie’s cousin. We took JaJa and Bae-Be, Dave, Erika, Cassidy and Xena. Mami had one of the guestrooms done up as a music room with a pulldown murphy bed. As soon as she heard that we had one, Xena claimed the Murphy bed…she thought it was the coolest thing ever. Dave took the pull-out in the study and the four girls doubled up in the queen beds in the other two guestrooms. Everything worked out perfectly, but it only worked because chicks could sleep together without anyone getting all bemused.

That left Commune with just Rainbow, Simeon, Jackson, Arjun, Adam and his chick, and Damien…and Hudson, of course. It worked out perfectly. They had enough rooms that none of their assigned family rooms had to be taken up and yet, no one had to double up except Adam and that Kelli chick. Now she was a freaky-deaky little thing. I kind of liked that about her. A couple of the Rangeman guys camped out in their basement, but that was more for security than anything else. Their boss was in town, so he put most of the security team up in the same hotel they were staying in down in Cincinnati so that they could do some debriefing. The promoters still had to pay for rooms for the touring crew, but even that worked out because it allowed the roadies and Lamar to stay in Cleveland and Columbus…close to the venues.

The second I walked in the front door, I knew I fucking loved our house. For serious, damn it…that damn Cassidy had infected my lexicon…anyway, the hardwood floors were gorgeous. They went throughout the entire house, except for the bathrooms and utility room. Those were a white stone with grey veining called Cappadocia sand home…it gave even the small, half bath a sense of brightness and airiness. The walls of the main living areas were all painted a slightly rosy, creamy, taupey beige with deep gray, steel blue, true taupe and true beige accents. It looked amazing with the floors. The ceilings weren’t white, which was awesome, instead they were the lightest shade of pale, slightly rosy, beige. The whole house was big and open. The doorways were more than wide enough for Artie…even for the smallest rooms and nooks. The hallways were all six feet wide. It was just perfect. Then when we saw the master suite…I fell even deeper in love with our new home. The room had vaulted ceilings that were painted to look like a gorgeous twilight sky. The walls were painted a smoky grayish blue that made me think of storm clouds and long Saturdays spend cuddling in bed. Speaking of, the bed was big and broad, high enough for comfort, but low enough for Artie’s needs. It had a dark blue duvet cover and pale gold sheets with a rainbow of pillows…masculine enough for Artie with pops of gold and red to make me happy and a rainbow of other colors and shapes to please Brittany. Mami definitely got an A-plus on the bed and the matching rosewood nightstands, entertainment center and vanity. I was very happy to see that there was a built-in wheelchair hoist that could totally double as a sex swing. It had been discussed on the MSC blog as a way for handicapable men…and women too…to be able to use different positions during sex. Mami had taken my hint, I could only hope that Artie would be into trying the new things too.

I continued into the master bathroom and couldn’t hold back a smile. The rosewood of the bedroom furniture was carried into the bathroom in the room’s cabinetry. There was a three-sink, completely custom vanity, with white marble countertop that was similarly veined to match the flooring. The entire twelve-foot countertop looked like stair steps since each of the sinks were actually at different heights. Each countertop area was a nice, generous, forty-eight inches wide…gave us each plenty of counter space. Artie’s countertop level was thirty-two inches and only had a thin drawer under the sink, to give him the ability to roll into place and reach the faucets and everything. My level of the countertop was four inches higher at the standard thirty-six inches height. My cabinetry was more woman friendly…meaning I had storage that Artie didn’t need or want anyway. The rosewood under my section of the countertop held one full width, but half depth, four-inch tall drawer on top, then three thin, six-inch tall drawers that were all half the depth of the thirty-inch-deep countertop. The bottom was a double door floating cabinet that was only gave me two additional feet of storage that went all the way back to the wall unlike the drawers above it. Britts’ section was similar to mine, but her extra four inches of height to her countertop lent her an extra four-inch height drawer. All the oil rubbed bronze fixtures and drawer pulls were mirrored in the metal encasing the glass doors of the massive roll in shower and the fixtures of the deep, soaking tub next to it. The rods that would allow Artie to pull himself from his chair to the bench in the shower, or onto the toilet or even, if he was feeling like it, into the soaker tub, were all the same dark metal.

“The bathroom and bedroom floors in the master suite are heated, but we didn’t bother for the guest rooms.” Mami explained a she walked us through the house in the early morning of that Friday of the Columbus concert. “I figured since we had to drop one counter top level for Artie, we could go ahead and make sure poor Brittany didn’t have to break her back every morning to get dressed either.”

Artie loved it. “I just like how it makes having the lower counter seem more normal somehow.” He confessed to my mother, earning himself a hug.

Mami did like Artie…maybe more than Brittany…she had a thing for nerdy guys. As was evidenced by her choice of my father. “You are perfectly normal, mi niño travieso. If anyone says otherwise, you send them to me and me…I’ll sent them straight to el infierno.”

“Mami, how come Artie is just naughty and I’m a devil?” I asked while giving her a total screw face.

She gave me one right back. “Because mi pequeña diablita, Arthur thinks bad things…but you…you say and do them.”

Brittany giggled. “Mami, you’re right. Artie thinks mean and evil thoughts, but Tana almost never stops at the thinking.”

“Come Angelita, let me show you where your towels and sheets and such live.” Mami chuckled. While they left the large master bath, I headed into our huge walk-in closet. Inside there were two large rosewood chifforobes with matching lingerie chests and a long horizontal dresser with like twenty drawers. There was ton of storage for shoes and yet even with all the wooden furniture there were still five sections of hanging racks. Several sections were tall enough for even full-length gowns for Britts but there were also plenty of lower racks that Artie could hang his shirts and pants on. It was a perfectly designed closet for our needs. I noticed that Mami hadn’t been able to resist doing some shopping. She probably decided to help us define our sections. There were a few sundresses and nice soft skirts and blouses to show Brittany’s part of the closet. My own section had a few pairs of slim cut slacks and pencil skirts and a few body con dresses. Artie’s section had slacks and dress shirts that had long sleeves…because Mami refused to buy the ones he preferred. There was lingerie in one of the chests that would look good on me and in the other a smaller selection of things that would complement Brittany’s slimmer body, fairer complexion and hair. In the long dresser, I found silk boxers for Artie as well as a few tee-shirts I was pretty sure were Papi’s handy work, not Mami’s. 

I caught up with them as they were looking through the study. Rather than desks or whatever, it was a room designed for reading and relaxing though there was also a TV and video game system in the room for entertainment purposes. In fact, the room was less of a study and more of a den. It was cozy and all dark wood and microfiber furniture, including a full couch with a pullout bed. Hell, it even smelled comforting and shit. There was a half bath in the hall going back towards the entryway. The great room had a fireplace and a corner that would be pretty perfect for a Christmas tree. It was pretty open with clear sight lines into the kitchen, front entry and the dining room. A hallway led to a huge ass pantry and a smaller one that it seemed was destined just to be a place for wine to live. The little corner pantry was lined in cedar and had smaller version of the glass entrance door and everything. Then Mami showed us the utility room. The washer and dryer lived there…I rolled my eyes and was happy to note that the table top for folding clothes and all the storage shelving was the perfect height for Artie to manage everything in the room. Which was great, because I did not do laundry…or bathrooms. I could clean the hell out of a kitchen though.

The kitchen, now that was hot as hell. Modern, dark zebrawood cabinetry, stainless steel appliances and brushed nickel hardware all gleamed. It wasn’t a huge kitchen, but it was fully functional. There was a center island with an inset, polished, ebony butcherblock countertop taking up most of the surface area. The upper cabinets were every bit as gorgeous as their lower counterparts but I knew that other than the open shelves on the bottom of them would get used. The only one who could reach more than the bottom most shelves was Brittany. Unless, I looked under the counter section that was lowered and cabinet-less to give Artie some prep space also. I also realized that was why Mami had gone with the French Door refrigerator. It put the freezer section at his fingertips. Over all, I loved it. It would work if Artie wanted to cook, or if Brittany wanted to try her hand at baking again…or for me to just make sandwiches or reheat pasta.

“Now, the guest rooms are all ready for your friends.” Mami told us as she led us through the small hall off the kitchen. We went into the center room first. “I told you that I was setting one as your music room, but I put in a murphy bed that acts as a built-in desk when it’s not need as a bed.” She showed us the music room which currently just held a music player, a small keyboard and a stand for Artie’s guitar. “The linens are color coordinated. This room is the peach room.” I noticed that the walls were painted a lovely shade of pale peach. “So, the bedding, linens and everything are either peach or ivory.” It shared a bathroom with another guest room. The simple three piece bathroom had the same floor tiles and counter tops, but it mirrored very modern zebrawood cabinetry from the kitchen rather than having the rosewood from our master. “Now, this room, is the cherry room.” Mami explained. It was easy to tell that the room had cherry furniture and the linens were in shades of red, pink and chocolate…without being dark or overly bright. It was a good balance. “Finally, we have the grape guest room.” She introduced us to the final bedroom which actually had its own bathroom. The solo bathroom was a smaller version of the other one on that side of the house. The bedroom had light colored maple furniture, and the bedding, curtains and everything soft was done in shades of purple and green. All three of the rooms were pretty lovely.

Thankfully, Mami and Papi had made arrangements for everyone to have a nice breakfast, nothing major, cereal and milk, bagels and cream cheese, bacon, toast and jams…that kind of thing. They’d made sure to have all of our personal favorites. Strawberry cream cheese for Brittany, honey and pecan cream cheese for me and Artie, Orange juice for me and Britts, apple for our hubby; every type of Smuckers on the market, because Brittany was always changing her mind on what her favorite preserve actually was. And of course, there was coffee. Mami had placed a Keurig in the kitchen for us, but that morning they’d brought in a big ass box of coffee from the Lima Bean. Papi had made sure there was enough sugar available to choke a bear and a wide selection of creamers. Thankfully, someone had also gotten a whole bunch of herbal teas, because BaeBe wasn’t much of a coffee drinker. Hell, my parents were so awesome, they even had honey for her.

Once we’d all eaten, Mami and Papi left us to our own devices and headed home. We’d see them later as they were coming to the concert. The nine of us took showers and slept until we had to get up and dressed to meet the buses for the drive down to Columbus for sound check. Our bedding was perfection. The mattress was one of the best I’d ever felt and I resolved to find out what kind it was. The sheets and blankets were all really soft and smelled great. We just slept that morning, but it was some damn good sleep. None of us had taken the time to explore much before we went to sleep, but I sure as hell checked out our bathroom. So, when we got up, the three of us brushed our teeth with the three Phillips Sonicare Diamond Clean toothbrushes that I found under my cabinet with a ‘Welcome to your new home’ card from the Doctors Jones. We got dressed in some clothes we didn’t mind practicing in and headed out. Even with nine of us and three showers, we were all clean and refreshed in plenty of time to get over to Commune’s house where the buses were waiting on us.

It was a comparatively short ride to the Nationwide Arena in Columbus. The tour crew had gotten booked into their rooms at the Red Roof Inn Plus, less than half a mile from the Arena then promptly gotten to work. By the time we all got there, things we set. We ran our usual sound checks, KAMA then Cassidy and then Alessia took over the stage while we KAMA folks headed to the Activity Center and ran through our practice. We sure did enough practices considering that we were doing shows pretty much every night, but I knew that it was that dedication that made our shows run so smoothly. And that night was no different, though the show lineup was changed a bit to give all of us who had parents and family members there that night a chance to shine. I sure as hell took that chance to show the world exactly how good I really was. We had some really serious good moments on that stage that night, and I knew that I personally was riding a high as we met with the families and Ms. Pillsbury. I was damn near giddy with it. Columbus was the state capital so, of course, there was an after party that we had to attend, but Commune was pretty cool in that they allowed any of us who wanted to ride back to Lima with our families to do so. Of course, Pippy, Teen Jesus and their muscle man all had their own vehicle so they just headed out when they were ready. For a change, the three of us decided not to go to the party. As much as we wanted to go and get our dance on, we really wanted to go and try out the hoist. I slipped Xena my copy of our house key and gave Dave the code for the security system then Artie, Britts and I headed home with our parents. 

Now, Artie had plenty of practice with hoists. There was a dressing hoist in our bedroom in Harlem and another one of the same type in his bathroom at his parent’s house. But for the most part he didn’t actually like to use the damn things. He found them to be overly cumbersome and had taught himself to get in and out of his chair using his upper body strength and well positioned hand holds. The built-in hoist next to the bed in our new bedroom was a fast fit. It was easily fitted with the sex swing, I’d found in one of the drawers of the rosewood vanity. Once that was all setup we were able to play to our hearts content. We managed to work through Artie figuring out how to use the hoist to give Britts some ridiculously hot looking missionary loving. Then Artie took my ass from behind a full four and a half feet in the air. The orgasm was real as fuck. Seriously, I damn near blacked out. It was so fucking awesome, we made the decision to build one of those in all of our future houses.

There was a delightful shower and then we slept and crashed hard as hell. But we did make it up in time get our happy asses dressed and drive down to Cincinnati. Mami rented us a Denali, so we had enough room for Artie’s chair, and Cassidy’s wedding reception kit. We followed Cedes, Sam and Puck in Puckerman’s Charger and Mami and Papi were behind us in Papi’s Macan with the Altmans, Jones and Evans in the Jones’ Enclave. The Redheaded stepchild, Teen Jesus and Unique were babysitting all the kiddles while the adults went to the wedding and reception. I looked fly, if I did say so myself. I’d found a great baby blue, lace, mini cocktail dress and some ivory FMPs on sale at Neiman Marcus. Britts had gone cute-sexy in a multi-printed, orange, ivory and black, midi dress with ruffled hem and some seriously hot as all fuck ruffled, suede, lace up sandals. Artie had worn a traditional navy slacks and blazer with a super light orange shirt and a tie that had his navy, my baby blue and Brittany’s ivory in some geometric pattern that looked way too mature for my handsome hubby. But he looked good as hell.

The wedding itself was really nice. It was elegant and classy. Emma was looking great. The dress wasn’t super expensive, but even I probably wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t spent the last couple of years around gowns that cost upwards of ten grand. But given that she was working with a public school salary, it was probably near the higher end of her budget. Her ivory gown was floor length with a small train. It didn’t fit the princess dresses she usually dressed in. She was dressed like a grown up. It was a good look on her. I’d have thought that a redhead would have avoided the pink, but it did look good on her bridesmaids. Bieste looked decent. I mean, she was one of the best teachers at McKinley and a truly good soul…which reminded me…I needed to get with Puck so we can figure out how to blackball Cooter and make sure that asshole couldn’t even get a job cleaning jockstraps anywhere in the continental United States, except maybe Mississippi or Fort Worth. Anyway, Bieste looked nice. She might not be the most beautifullest girl in the world, but she managed at least pretty that day, and to be honest, some of that was the beauty of her soul shining through in pure joy for the happiness of her friend. It was cool to see how many of the teachers from were there. It wasn’t all of them by any means, but there were at least several people from each department that I recognized.

The reception was nice. The venue was ten minutes away, but rather than making people drive around an unfamiliar city, there were shiny black party-bus type buses to convey us back and forth. The dinner was great. The music was on point. Over the course of the evening and into the night, one thought kept going through my mind. Ms. Pillsbury looked happier than I could ever remember seeing her. Which made a lot of sense…at least to me. Hal Gruber was even hotter than Dr. Carl. He was sure as hell smarter than Coach Tanaka and he had a lot more sense, backbone and honor than Will Schuester had ever had even on his best day. And that was how I felt after I’d reached the point where I no longer wanted to set Schue on fire on a bi-weekly basis. I was happy for her. I really hoped that she liked our gift. We had decided that a Bissell home floor steam cleaner would be practical and something Pillsbury would appreciate. Plus, it was on her registry and it didn’t break the bank. The open bar was pretty awesome…couldn’t get too happy with it though, we had to drive back to Lima at the end of the night. When we left, we were giddy, but not tipsy or drunk. We did have to stay a bit longer than I’d have preferred, but that was just because we were Cassidy’s ride. She had done her thing and I know that I saw both Hal and Ranger slip her envelopes of cash for her tip. We swung her through the Chase in Dayton on the way home so she could deposit the two grand the envelopes contained. She was happy and hell, I was happy for her.

Not a happy as I was when we got home and found that Erika and Elena had made paella for dinner and saved the four of us some. It was so good, even if I’d still been full, I’d have eaten the whole thing and worked it off the next day or something. Not that there was time the next day. Since I was home, and apparently Tito had been gloating to Abuelita that I saw him so often, my grandmother made Mami and Papi bring her over after Mass. As soon as we found that out, we invited Roger, Gwen, Chris and Melanie over to join us for dinner. No way could we have my parents over and not theirs. Abuelita coming over was definitely a good news-bad news situation. Abuelita brought groceries with her and made us all a Puerto Rican Sunday dinner that was quite frankly without equal. She even made Pastelon…my favorite. But she also brought a couple of my cousins with her. Now, I was cool as hell with Diego and Angel…hell, I still owed Diego a grip for the whole Prison Bitch Tinsley shit, but the third of my cousins she brought with her, Alejandro, was irritating as all fuck. Like those people who thought Artie was a nerd…they should have been forced to meet Alejandro. He thought that he was the smartest person in the room. He’d quit school at thirteen claiming that he was bored and gotten an online diploma within a year after that. He had started a whole bunch of degrees online, but couldn’t be bothered to finish one before getting bored and moving on to the next thing. I could understand most of that, I got bored easily myself. My problem with Alejandro was that his ass was a less intelligent, less driven Percy Weasley and it pissed me off that I even knew enough about those books to make that comparison.

I greeted him like I always did. “So Alex,” he hated nicknames and abbreviations of his full name. “You actually finished a major yet? Or are you still settling for being an Assistant manager at the Quick Stop, Dante?” In my defense, he really was too damn smart to be working at a gas station for the rest of his life.

“No, Santana, I’m working on my BS in applied mathematics. And I quit the QT,” he stressed the name of the gas station like it mattered. “I work for the post office now.”

“Oh my god…you’re a mail man. You swear that you have an IQ of a gazillion, and you’re a freaking mail man.” I crowed in laughter.

Alejandro gave me a dark look. “It’s an honorable profession.” He was getting angry. Good, I liked him better when he was angry. He was the only person I knew who was less of a dick when he was mad.

“Well, of course it is. I love getting my Cosmo delivered monthly. But I’m pretty sure that I saw an episode of SVU where a post man with too high an IQ became a serial killer out of sheer boredom. Are you gonna break Abuelita’s heart by becoming the first Latino serial killer.” I shot back.

“A la mierda, pequeña prima.” He snarled.

I just smirked. “You wish…I don’t do incest. But, ya know what? I like you like this…hot under the collar… not all supercilious and unctuous. Taking that stick out your ass looks good on you Primo.” Leaving him speechless, I sauntered off leaving him looking stupid as I went to see what horrible story Abuelita was telling the others about me. My feisty grandmother had pressed Artie and Elena into service. They translated for her to Brittany, Dave and Xena as they all marched to the beat of Abuelita’s drum. My grandmother could speak English as well as any other American…she just preferred not to unless she had no other choice. I wondered where Erika had gotten to only to realize that she’d probably headed over to Gala’s house…where Damien was staying. Those two were still scratching each other’s itches in a strictly no strings kind of way. I had a bet on it being Eureka to catch feelings first…but not for Dame, nope I was pretty sure that she was secretly in love with Cassidy. Yup…Artie had his money on Damien falling for Erika and her leading him on a merry chase…until he learned Spanish just to understand that she’d been in love with him for a while and only telling him in her mother tongue. Brittany wouldn’t take a bet either way, which probably meant we were both wrong and they were really going to successfully manage the whole friends with benefits minefield.

It didn’t take Abuelita near as long as it would have without all the help and almost before I knew it we were chowing down on asopao with shrimp and vegetables, ramp escabeche, arroz con gandules, my delicious pastelón, that I graciously shared with my family and friends, and finally she finished it off with coquito cupcakes. I swear, Elena was ready to beg to be adopted and she wasn’t the only one. Dave totally wanted my Abuelita to feed him on an almost constant basis. I didn’t blame him, when I got real loot, I was building a big ass house in Cali with a separate place for Abuelita to live on the same property, so she could come over and cook our meals, but then go back to her own house. I’d even hire her a driver to take her to Mass every day. I was a good granddaughter. It was one of my favorite family dinners ever. Diego and Roger bonded over our hardwood floors. Angel and Mami had fun teasing Melanie and Chris. And Gwen, she had the most fun of all. She quickly figured out that Alejandro was an intelligence snob. So, over the course of dinner, she threw out my husband’s awesome A plus GPA, but she managed to make my GPA a topic of conversation. “You know Santana’s got an overall three point seven-five GPA at NYU…and my little Artie told me that she finished this last semester with a three point eight two five. You must be so very proud.”

Alejandro pasted a fake smile on his face. “That’s great, Satan. You must be working very, very hard to get those type of grades.”

I would have squashed him verbally for that meirda, but Gwen spoke up before I could. “Oh, I’m sure she does work hard, but remember, she isn’t just a full time student, she’s also got a full time job with amazing benefits.” Gwen said proudly. “Plus, according to Haja, she’s got quite a few industry reps quietly courting her.” She really enjoyed rubbing his nose in my success.

After we finished dinner, Abuelita asked for a tour of the house. Our guests asked if she could give them a few minutes to straighten up their temporary homes. Thankfully, Brittany had convinced me to help her make our bed when we got up. Of course, when we showed her the study and she noticed its proximity to the master suite Abuelita looked at me, “this room will be un vivero perfecto for las criaturas. I will wait until you finish that hoity-toity college of yours, then I want bisnietos.”

“L’Anciana, you know that I plan on having a career after college. It’s gonna be at least a half dozen years before I can even think about taking time off to have a kid.” I sighed exasperatedly.

Abuelita gave Brittany a long look. “Her, your Rubia, she can have me bisnietos with your genius Judio husband, while you have your big career.” Of Course, my grandmother only saw those two as mine. Mami was still not her daughter in law. She was Papi’s wife. By the same term, her kids and grandkids were only every referred to as belonging to her.

Brittany looked so happy I was almost ready to knock her up myself. “I love babies. Santana, Artie…can I have a baby once you two finish college? Abuelita said I could.”

I gave my grandmother a complete screw face. “Do you see what you’ve done?” I turned to the only woman I loved more than myself. “Brittany, please, give us until after my first international tour?” I negotiated. And what followed was definitely a fucking negotiation. It took us hours, literally two and a half hours, to get Brittany to agree that she could wait until I’d gotten at least a gold album and Artie had won an MTV Video Music award for Best Direction to go off her birth control and we’d start trying for a kid. It took us another half hour after that to get Abuelita to shut up about how she might be dead by then. By the time we got all that settled, I was freaking exhausted.

I was so tired, I said good night to everybody and went and took the longest shower I’d ever been blessed to take…then I crashed. Monday was a show day, so Trouty had us up at the ass crack of dawn to go for a run. At least he managed to get Adams, Closet-Case, Poufy-Nipples, El Gigante, and Clone Boy…hell all of the locals and more than a few of the younger New Directions and a few young Titans joined us. I was a little surprised that Unique even came out…she was doing more of a power walk than a jog or a run, but she kept up with all of us, not the Rangemen at the front, but most of us could barely keep up with them, so it wasn’t that big a deal. She and Pippy made good time and they never did fall all that far behind Tina and Cassidy. The rest of the morning was spent getting the house back together. We cleaned it from top to bottom, with some help from our bandmates. We even did laundry and remade the beds and everything. It wasn’t easy, but we managed to get it all done and stocked the leftovers that we didn’t manage to eat in the freezer. Art-man, Britts and I agreed that we would be back as soon as we could to at least spend a weekend recharging after the tour.

When we left that morning, we locked the house down and set the alarm. The tour moved immediately from Cleveland to Pittsburgh after the concert and after party. Then it was on to the next stop, and the next and the next after that. We did everything we could to keep things from feeling monotonous. And I had to give Commune credit, they gave one hell of a show every single night. They took care of their crew for the whole summer…if only we’d realized that even though there were no snakes in the bush, there was certainly a pawn on the board.

Welcome To The Future (Brad Paisley)  
Artie PoV

I knew that it probably wasn’t cool to say, but I, freaking, loved touring. The repetition was kind of a bitch, but it was still a hell of a lot better than going to an office every day and all that shit. All the same, I was grateful that we had a game system on the bus. By halfway through August we were all a little tired and ready to go home, but the two weeks after we left Ohio were pretty awesome. Our caravan was joined by a total DRV…Dad Recreational Vehicle…which contained the Doctors Jones, and Bubbie Ruth and all the kids in Commune’s big ass family, oh and Az’s Little Bird. It was supposed to have been all the parents, and all the kids and then Ruth would fly out to take over when the adultiest of the adults had to get back to Lima. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way, though it was for the best of all reasons. Sander’s team at his job got a new project that needed all hands on deck and even he would be getting what was basically overtime for the rest of the summer. Then on top of that, WH Taft had lost the head of their social studies department at the beginning of the summer. With Mama Evan’s dual masters in history and politics, the principal had pushed her through to head the school wide social sciences department. It was great news and even came with a raise…but it also came with responsibilities that made it an impossibility for her to go a vacation that close to the start of school. Poor George was the last adult to have to back out. The grown folk’s property venture had run into what Dad called a hiccup, but it was something that George had to stick around town and handle. Rebekah had known that she wouldn’t be able to ride with them the whole two weeks, so she stayed to enjoy some peace and quiet alone with her husband before she started med school the third full week of the month. So, in the end, there were three actual adults, one man-child on the brink of man status, one bossy as hell teenager, two rather mature tweens, two little girls, and four toddlers all in a DRV, undertaking a family road trip.

It was pretty cool timing too. The Teen Choice Awards halfway through the two weeks they were with us. Since it was the Teen Choice Awards, Commune glammed up their teenaged siblings and the three of them were the bosses’ dates for the event. Since it wasn’t a performance show, the timing of the tour made that impossible, just the six of them, Hudson, Binkie and Junior flew out of Grand Rapids as soon as humanly possible after the show that Saturday night. Lester and Darcy had met them out there to provide extra security, Lester, and to do the whole Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, hype shit, Darcy. The rest of us drove on to Milwaukee and watched the Blue Carpet and the awards show from the comforts of the Mitchell Meeting Room at the Hilton Milwaukee City Center. Huds had even arranged for us to be able to partake in a variety of snacks and everything. It was pretty much awesome. There was popcorn, pop, tons of candy and snacks…both Red Vines and Twizzlers…so it was a pretty good haul.

KAMA had been elevated from the early arrivals to nearer the end of the middle set of arrivals…one could even make a case that they were just near the front of the ‘Oh Hell Yeah, they’re here now so the show can begin’ people. The first of our trio of nominees to do the walk was Sam and Tessa. Sam looked way more casual than he usually did for an award show in a pair of dark wash jeans and a ‘faded’ pumpkin orange Henley with the sleeves pushed up. It was easy to tell that what he was wearing cost more than the average outfit, but it was something that Darcy would have no problem telling people how to recreate. It was also something that let Tessa shine, in what she told the world was a Marchesa Notte, embroidered tulle, high-low gown and Schutz Cristen Crystal-Embellished Leather Sandals. The pale blue dress with the pink, ivory and green floral embroidery was pretty on her. The top of it kind of reminded me of the Madonna ‘Like A Virgin’ nineteen-eighty-four MTV performance dress, but it wasn’t over the top or risqué. Her hair was stick straight in comparison with the poofy, flowy dress. She looked lovely. Of course, Sam spent like a half a minute on the tour and the other minute and a half of the clip they showed bragging on Tessa’s coming attendance at the University of Iowa.

Cedes and Sarah were the next ones up the carpet. I was actually more than a little surprised that Puck had let Sarah out of his sight at a Hollyweird event. He was sure that half the producers and power people in that town were pedophiles and the rest were just plain, old fashion rapists. But then I noticed that both Binkie and Junior were shadowing two of the girls that meant the most in the world to Noah Puckerman and realized why he was so cool with it. Of course, there was the obligatory, who is this with you and what are you wearing questions. Cedes was in a cute red, Zuhair Murad, lace and chiffon, fit and flare mini-dress which she, Kurt and Ruth had paired with a pair of black, Sophia Webster royalty velvet crown embellished sandals…that gave her a heck of a lot of extra height. She’d decided not to have weave put in for one night or take one of her wigs with her. Instead, her hair had been straightened at the roots, and pulled back into a jeweled band and then left to afro puff out from there and that was not a small puff either…it was a halo of hair for real. Next to her, Sarah looked a lot more hot than I was comfortable thinking about. Though everything she was wearing was really age appropriate.

Mercedes let her speak for herself to address the question of who she was wearing. “My dress is Carolina Herrera…it was a gift from Sam, Cede and No-Puck,” she caught herself. Sarah’s dress was demure, starting at her the bottom of her neck in four, alternating, wide bands of pink and black. The pink parts were embellished with small little shiny bits of something. Her hair was loosely curled and caught in a half updo that looked intricate, but innocent. “My shoes are Louboutins…they were a gift from Moms D. Cede’s Mom.” She clarified. The shoes in question weren’t as high as I usually thought of when Louboutins, but the black lace over pale pink peep toe heels did have the distinctive red bottoms. They were cute and looked good on her. She’d gotten a simple American manicure and pedicure since they’d left us, but that was to be expected. It was a red-carpet event.

“Wow, Louboutins for a fourteen-year-old.” Someone tried muttering under their breath. But the whole world heard it. Especially Sarah.

“I will have you know that I earned these shoes. Moms D said that I had to stay on the A honor roll all through middle school and I did. Okay, maybe earn is the wrong word since doing well in school will benefit me in the long run, but still.” Sarah argued.

Mercedes smiled a chilling smile and we all knew that meant the Diva was unhappy with the asshat camera guy. “All As and a ‘graduating’ A-plus average and that was with advanced math and English classes. She worked very hard for those shoes. Harder than I was willing to work at her age. My parents have always given great incentives for good grades. Momma just knew that the way to Sarah’s heart was through her shoes.” She teased Sarah all while giving that guy a look that should have had him pissing himself. “Her accomplishment should be lauded. But by the same turn, even if she’d done nothing to earn her treats, she is walking the red, well, blue carpet. Why on earth should she not be able to look like many of the other guests out here tonight?”

The interviewer made a sound of agreement, when Lester popped into the frame looking almost more like a secret service agent than just regular security. “Is there a problem, Ms. Jones?” the look he shot the camera guy was pretty damn hostile too.

“No, Mr. Diaz.” She said sweetly. The Rangemen all had code names for Commune to in public if they didn’t go by a nickname. Most people looked at Lester and assumed since he was Hispanic, Diaz was probably his real name. And it might have been if his father had been the parent of Cuban descent, but his dad was Puerto Rican, hence the name Santos. Still, it was a damn good feint and would fool a lot of people. “We were just getting ready to move along. Nice to speak with you Darla.” She looked at the camera man and moved on without saying anything else to him.

Somehow, Puck must have heard or learned what happened because we saw him, but we had to change to a different site to see his interview. He and Jake were dressed similarly, distressed jeans that cost way more than anyone would ever let good old Sammy-Boy know they did, white tee shirts that showed their muscular-ness and blazers, black for Puck and navy for Jake. They were both even wearing same lace up leather boots. Two different colors though Jake’s were a dark brown rather than navy. They looked good and damn near identical. The blonde chick from Entertainment Tonight…or maybe she was the one from the Insider, anyway…she told them that and they just laughed. they’d totally done it on purpose.

Other than Jamal Lyon, who walked the carpet by himself, right after Puck and Jake, I zoned out over the next round of teen beloved celebrities. It was cool to see Wiz Kalifa there with his little boy. Hakeem Lyon was there with Tiana…like that shit was for real. I’d dated Brittany, before she and Santana were comfortable being out. Well, before Santana was anyway. I could spot a beard easily. But I figured maybe they had an arrangement. It was none of my business either way. The awards show finally started. I loved music. I loved movies. I loved good, quality television. I wasn’t a big fan of entertainment journalism. I did pay attention to the actual show. I loved Jamal and Hakeem’s performance. I thought that Tiana was overrated and just trying to get by with pushing her sexuality to the hilt. She could sing, so she wasn’t totally manufactured, but she wasn’t as good as people made her out to be, but she was a good performer. The televised show didn’t let us see both the categories KAMA or KAMA members were nominated in, but we did get to see them take the Surfboard for Choice Song: Group…which they won for ‘Rescue Me’. When Ludacris read off the list of those who’d won awards that weren’t being shown, he’d straight up laughed when he read out, “Sam and Puck of KAMA have dethroned One Direction, for the Choice Male Hotties of the year.”

It was pretty awesome to see from the family road trip outside looking in. And to be honest, it ended up being more than a blessing that they were touring the Midwest and mountains with us, sorta, they didn’t stick with us all the time, they did stuff and then met back up with us when they were ready to. Like when they stayed in the Twin Cities to try and find Prince in his natural habitat. They met up with us again in Des Moines. Thankfully, they were with us in Wichita when Damien got food poisoning…it may have been because we dared him to try the shrimp in a sketchy diner where we went for lunch. But Adam, Arjun and I were admitting nothing. Anyway, Jake was easily able to rock his gear and provide the necessary background vocals. Because he’d been a New Direction and was family, he could follow Cedes crazy runs better than anyone on that stage other than my Devil Doll and my ex-girlfriend. But he also had a weird kind of synergy with Arjun. That guy was even better after Jake finished educating him on judging Mercedes’ moods to figure out which songs she was going to all out on. It was interesting to hear laid out like that. We’d grown up with her and figured that shit out in an intuitive kind of way…so none of us had realized that that was what we were doing. It helped…Arjun moved from a good temporary backup singer, to a borderline great one with the potential to be a permanent one if the need ever arose.

It was hard to say good bye to them in Phoenix, but they were just five days from the first day of school for all the Lima kids. Nikki wouldn’t start her fifth grade year until the day after the MTV Movie awards. I had to admit, Nikki was my favorite little kid out of the whole Commune crew. The math she and I could play around with was seriously epic. And watching her playing with math with Brittany sincerely wrecked my confidence. They got into mathematics at a level that kind of scared me. Me, Puck and Ruth had to bow out after a while. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but Ruth was the one who stuck in the longest with those two. I kind of wished that Lauren had been there too. That would have been awesome. Zizes’ GPA was less than a hundredth of a percentage point below my own…but she was way deeper into higher levels maths than I was. Me, a lot like Puck, I preferred my big ass numbers to have dollar signs in front of them. I was pretty sure that I was well on my way to earning those kinds of checks myself. My documentary had been a large part of my high end of the semester GPA. I was really proud of it. My professor had even entered it in the fall student film festival. Some big names came to that. I could only hope and pray that someone major saw something in my film to make them want to talk with me further. That would be so boss.

Somehow, I had become the OND’s, Original New Directions, GPA tracker. Like seriously the second that they got their grades, they all emailed me with them. Like I had a dedicated spread sheet or something. Okay, so maybe I did have a spreadsheet dedicated to tracking all our grades, but I created it because they sent me their grades every semester. I may have been tracking Rachel’s grades before she got beat down, too. Hey, inquiring minds wanted to know. Her grades were the worst of the entire OND. Even Finn had better grades than Rachel, and not to be funny but that shit made me laugh every time I thought about it. She had some serious grade issues. Even her performance based classes weren’t all that great. That must have crushed her heart. I’d have felt bad, except for her getting those rugby jocks to dump me down those stairs. Hell, I had laughed my ass off when that jack ass had been taken out of class in cuffs for questioning in the Ratchet beat down case. A few people in that class who’d had classes with Santana before they knew me…they came up to me after that class just to say that they finally got how me and Tana were together. That happened a lot when people finally got to know me.

After we left Arizona, we hit Vegas. That was a pretty damn cool crowd. I mean they didn’t just know the words, they knew every one of our names. By then we were rolling with Todrick Hall, and I popped up on his set for a while to help him out and people were shouting my name like I was somebody. That was real as hell. After Vegas, we headed to LA. Xena rented a car and rolled out to Goldfield to check the progress on her side hustle and but she made it to LA the very next day. She was happy as hell with the progress that was being made though so that was cool. Lauren and I with some assistance from one of Darcy’s old MIT buddies had written some serious firewalls and programs that would allow the people who utilized their services to be assured an almost unparalled level of security that their names and information would remain hidden. It was hard, but I got to have a serious blast writing code to allow for their customer service reps, at least that was how I thought of them, to do web shows and interviews with prospective clients. Lauren had me beat though. The code she wrote was going to be utilized to secure the streams bringing the strip club to all those who wanted to purchase a membership to look at the dancers. She would call me cackling to have me look over portions and help her extrapolate the needed bandwidth. She was having just that much fun with her part as I was having with mine. Lauren was also the one working to make the site visually both subtly sexy and user friendly. We’d both agreed to charge Xena and her peeps next to nothing instead, we were planning on using the publicity from making their site secure to ride a tech wave into a side hustle. Me and Lauren were both entrepreneurs at heart.

I wasn’t sure what changed in South Carolina, but about a month after Xena stayed behind in Charleston with Team Money, aka Ethan Harris and Saul Mayzer, Lauren and I started seeing deposits from SBX incorporated that basically amounted to like real programmer money. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. To be honest, I didn’t feel like it was something she needed to do. Yeah, it took up a serious portion of our down time…but we were enjoying what we were doing. So, I took time to ask Xee about it. “What’s up with the extra money Xee? It’s like real money. I thought we had an agreement.”

She gave me a smile that always made me uncomfortable…like we were in the Walking Dead and my adopted big sister had started to turn and I had the biggest brains she had access to. “Artie, the deal was in place when we were strapped for cash and every dollar was going into the brick and mortar setup. It adapted because I came into some money and I would have felt skeevy as hell if I hadn’t cut you guys a better arrangement.”

“So? You could have done something for us once you got your shit up and running. You told me that you’re fucking addicted to the Property Brothers show…you know how delays and problems happen in just remodeling, what if you guys need that money to cover your asses?” I shot back.

She ruffled my hair. I snatched my head back. I hated when she did that. She didn’t even care. Why did I always catch the most feelings, even completely platonic ones, for women who never had any fucks to give? “Artie, if I swear that the first thing I did was refill and double the contingency account for each of the builds, will you take the money and stop bitching at me for trying to do the right thing?”

I thought about it for a second. “I just don’t want to stand in y’all’s way. Being able to go legit is important for your family. Plus too, I’ve seen your plans for getting people out of bad sitchiasions…it’s important too. I don’t want to fuck your shit up before it can even get started.” I said honestly.

“I love that you get it…why we’re working so hard to do this. And I appreciate that you care...but Dude it’s a little insulting that you don’t think I’m intelligent enough to have my shit straight.” She shook her head sadly…it took a few minutes for her ponytail to stop moving…she had a lot of hair.

“How is it that I come in here trying to be magnanimous and return your money, and I’m gonna roll outta here feeling like the worst person ever?” I grumbled. “You and I both know you ain’t nowhere close to stupid. Stupid people can’t commit emotional blackmail. Fine, I’ll take the money and put it all on my mortgage. Will that make you happy?”

“Ridiculously happy.” Xena answered. Then she dropped a kiss to the top of my head. Her old tall ass…even if I wasn’t in a chair she’d have towered over me. “Now, what’s this Tana told me about turning a wheelchair hoist into a sex swing and do you think we need to make some of the rooms accessible?”

That lead to us getting into how that would work and how they’d already had it in their plans to make all the bathrooms wheelchair user friendly. From there, we went to talking about how to say that on the site without offending anyone or whatever. That evening reminded us both of a simple truth. Family, blood or choice, family tried to do right by family in all things. So, by the end of our talk, our shit was golden all over again. Which was good, because we’d killed all the time I had before my date with Tana and Brittany that night.

LA was a good city for my low level chronic, back ache, but overall it was less accessible than New York. Still, whenever we were in the area, Tana wanted to go to Rodeo…thankfully she’d squeaked out some time and taken Brittany with her that time. But she also loved to eat at fancy restaurants where she could star watch. I’d gotten us reservations at Craig’s, which was haute cuisine, even if the name of the place always made me want to watch Friday. John Legend and Chrissy Teigen were there that night, so were Rosie Huntington Whiteley, and Cindy Crawford, but we actually sort of knew and had spoken with Chrissy and John before. We said hello as we went by their table but definitely played it cool. But before they left Chrissy sent John Legend to our table to tell us to let KAMA know that they would be at the concert the next night and couldn’t wait to see them again. But the most boss thing of all was that when we called for our bill, they’d handled it for us. So, I left the wait staff a big ass tip and we headed back to our deluxe room in the Luxe City Center Hotel near the Staples Center. And made love until sleep overtook us. then it was up and on a show day schedule the next day.

From the second we knew that our Staples Center show was happening on the anniversary of the birth of the King of Pop, there had been no way that the show wasn’t going to be dedicated to his memory. The show that night had to have been one of my top five favorite shows of the entire tour. Of course we had to make the show special; so, Cede, Sam and Puck had decided that all the non-KAMA songs would be Michael Jackson songs. There were usually a total of five covers, including the Dylan cover. We were doing one extra that night because a…we could and b…because that was as narrowed down as we could get ourselves when it came to favorite Michael Jackson songs. To be honest, if Cass hadn’t created a whole set of her favorite Jackson songs, we’d have still been arguing on which ones to do for the five covers we could reasonably fit into the set list. The first cover of the night was up to Puck to decide upon. He’d won the right of first choice by winning a game among the three of them that Sam called the ‘who can last the longest under the onslaught of pleasure of a doubly focused oral extravaganza’. We probably shared way too much sexual information amongst ourselves. But anyway…Puck’s pick was ‘Man in the Mirror’. The vocals were Him, Arjun and the Dam Bros…but the dancing…that was all Elena and Jax. They did a mix of modern and contemporary that was beautiful and visually wrenching. That performance broke the internet. For a full hour.

Then the video of the second MJ Tribute cover was posted. Sam’s selection, well, he gave his pick away. Santana and I got to sing our asses off on ‘Scream’ while Britts and Mike recreated the iconic brother-sister dances from the nineteen-ninety-five video. It was fucking incredible. The internet fans loved it and were all clamoring for my Devil Doll to step out of the background and put out an album of her own. The third Michael cover was voted upon by all the OND’s, those on the tour and those back in Lima and NYC. Actually, we ended up in a tie between Puck and Cedes singing ‘Dirty Diana’ and him and Sam doing ‘Smooth Criminal’…so we did both. We all agreed that after the state finals junior year, we couldn’t resist doing ‘Thriller’…though it was a very close runner up. Cede’s choice was placed during the encore, blasphemous though the thought may have been, ‘Human Nature’ had never sounded so good. She and Sam made magic with that duet. Rainbow had choreographed an amazing dance sequence to go along with it. Sam and Cede parked and sang while the dancers all moved around them in shades of red. It was gorgeous and loving and sexy as hell. It was the perfect end to the night.

The internet fucking exploded with how much people were talking about it on social media and just everywhere. Darcy, who was there along with almost all of Team KAMA for that special show and for the MTV Video Music Awards the next night, had recorded all the covers and put them up on the site. The fans had their choice of one free download for their merch purchases over a hundred bucks. If they bought over five hundred dollars in merch, they got all five videos. By the time we made it back on the road after the award show, there had already been over a hundred thousand people who’d been able to download all five videos.

With KAMA nominated in more than one category and ‘The Ballad of Tamir Rice’ video debuting during the show, even though we weren’t performing, our whole camp had tickets to go to the event. In addition to Commune themselves, the VMA’s planning board had sent invitations to three individuals within their Crew. Rainbow was a VMA award winning choreographer, she got to walk that red carpet all the time. Dave had been in a VMA nominated band before and was in one for a second time. He wasn’t invited every year, but he was invited often enough that he didn’t find it strange that he’d gotten invited again. Cassidy was going as his plus one. It would get her out in front of more people. She was as good as Daft Punk or Avicii or any of the other major DJs that had deals of their own. The third invitation among KAMA’s crew had gone to none other than mi Hermosa Diabla, Santana Lopez. We were doing the VMA’s red carpet as a thruple. I was pretty sure that was because Lyor and his people weren’t stupid. They thought that if they got Tana hooked on the high life, she would quit school to pursue the dream. It was something both Brittany and I agreed we wanted to avoid, but by the same turn, if Santana really wanted to do so, we’d support her. My plan was to enjoy the perks and try to stretch out their wooing until she graduated as planned.

See we had plans for our future that include us all getting our paper first and foremost. Because when we understood the moves our people were making on our behalf…when we could double check behind our money folks…when we could read and understand the contracts people wanted us to sign…then we knew, we’d be fucking unstoppable. Besides, Santana was in love with the thought of shoving her degree down Berry’s throat whenever she got the chance. I kind of loved that idea myself. But still, we were going to enjoy Elektra’s attempts to convince us to make moves early all the same. The future was a stunning prospect filled with trepidations and worries…but it was also filled with possibilities that would still be there when we graduated. If they weren’t, we’d just have to make our own opportunities. I was confident that no matter what the future brought to us, between the three of us, our families and the friends we’d made…there was nothing we couldn’t face, fight and overcome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God bless those lost in Vegas. God bless those lost in NYC.  
> Terrorism is terrorism no matter the color or religion of the terrorist.  
> God bless Robert Mueller & his entire staff.  
> God bless the Vegas & NYC first responders. 
> 
> Leave me a comment and let me know how you feel about the chapter.


	14. Endless Summer Nights (Richard Marx)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy shares her Summer 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.  
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87. Awesomest Beta of 2017!  
> THANKS to all the Veterans who served America in times of War and in times of Peace.  
> Rest in Peace to my Grandfather who served in both WWII & in Korea. Granddaddy, you are loved and you are missed.   
> Rest in Peace to my Uncles who served in Vietnam. Melvin & Alexander, you are loved and you are missed.  
> Happy Veteran's Day to my family members, kind of too numerous to list, who have served in the military in the years since.

Chapter 14

Endless Summer Nights (Richard Marx)  
Darcy PoV

I had nothing at all to complain about. I had more than one amazing job. I had very little in the way of living expenses. Between Gwen and Hector, almost all of my tech cost were expensed back to me. I’d been very diligent about paying down my student loan debt. I’d come out of undergrad with less than thirty thousand in debt, but I’d incurred quite a little over three times that just for my concurrent MS work. I wasn’t even sure if Sam, Puck and Mercy knew that I had my MS. I had a very real tendency to hide my intelligence behind my snark. My mom and Dennis hadn’t found out until they’d gotten the letter with the tickets that communicated exactly what degrees I was graduating with. So realistically, KAMA may have thought that when I graduated in the June after I was hired, I was getting just my undergrad degrees, but I was actually getting the MS, the two BSs and the AA. It had been hard as hell. I’d had to take both night and summer classes to make it work, but it had been so entirely worth it. So, when I got that huge windfall bonus after the Valentine’s concert, I’d put the whole thing towards paying off my student debt.

Then, a miraculous thing happened. I got a bonus from Rangeman when they finished calculating the impact my work for them had made. In addition to the somewhat ridic contractor fees they were paying me, which were a total bonus to me anyway…Rangeman gave me a bonus of twenty-five thousand that I immediately put towards my student loans, too. With those two bonuses and the fourteen hundred bucks I sent the student loan vampires like clockwork, I had less than what I owed for just the undergraduate portion of my education left to tackle after the tour. And best of all was Gwen had still written off or whatever, the interest of my student loan repayment up to the full federal allowance. She was so awesome. I wasn’t sure if I could, or even should, continue to have her do my taxes once I was no longer just working for KAMA, but she insisted. So, I was thankful. To show my appreciation, since she was charging each of us, KAMA adjacent souls, less than H&R Block, I sent her a Best Buy gift card for a couple of hundred bucks.

Ms. Gwen called and offered me a deal, “Darcy, I would like it very much if you could find some time to come out to Lima once my new office is closer to being ready and help me get the new computers and everything and create a cyber security system, make it so my clients information is as safe as houses.”

“I can certainly do that.” I told her with no hesitation, my mind immediately starting to try and decide how fast a processor would be best to run some of the better accounting softwares. I’d have to do some research to find out which one she liked the most and which one was the best on the market.

“Good, I’d also like you to set me up so that I can have an umm… I’ve forgotten what Arthur called it, but I want to be able to work from home more often without having to drag actual paperwork all over the place, I’m hoping to go as paperless as possible. Oh, and I’ll need to be able to access my staff’s client files, but keep my files accessible only to me. Is that possible?”

“Yes, it is. I can set your business up with a remote desktop system. I can even make it so that you’re the only one who has the necessary credentials to log in remotely. And backup your staff files from their hard drives to a separate server weekly that you can access if you need to but only you or your IT specialist would be able to get into the files on it.” I advised her.

“You’re agreeing to be my IT specialist, though right?” She asked with a small bit of unease.

I chuckled. “You know I’ve got your back, Tax Lady.” And I did. Given the mobility of my job, I couldn’t even be sure that Sam, Cedes and Puck even knew when I flew to Lima in March. I’d spent a few days helping Gwen order the right CPUs, monitors, printers and other peripherals that she needed for herself, her assistant business manager, Sunni, her four junior accountants and the receptionist she was hiring. Her husband and the interior decorator guy had done a good job on making sure the office looked nice and was somewhat functional. They had made sure that each workstation or office had a desk, an ergonomic office chair, a place for a visitor to sit and storage. Me, I made that bitch user friendly. I made sure that every desk had a computer, monitor, ergonomic wireless keyboard and mouse, speakers, a flatbed scanner, one of those big ass accounting calculators with the receipt tape on it that printed out their math, and I picked out the office phone system. I also gave her the specs for the office copier-slash-printer-slash-fax machine and got her under contract with a VoIP service provider that included IP faxing as part of their package. I made sure to get her an eighty terrabyte Buffalo DriveStation server and kept a full twenty terrabytes accessible only by her and I which was set to back up all her staff files weekly, keeping the files for a year. Then that year of files would be backed up on a second one of the same servers that would hold those for seven years. 

While I was there in Lima, I also hooked Uncle Ben up too. He’d finally realized that between Amicitiae Amore, the parent’s subsidiary businesses, most of which were too small to have their own HR departments, KAMA and Amor Verissima, he needed help and couldn’t manage it all out of his home office anymore either. Thankfully Amicitiae Amore had spaces in their newly refurbished business park. Uncle Ben’s office was next door to Gwen’s. He was in the process of hiring a part time receptionist, an HR administrative assistant, two HR Generalists, a benefits administrator and a compensation specialist. I helped him get all the tech he needed too. Okay so I just made sure that everyone would have all the same things as Gwen’s people, just with small all-in-one printers rather than flatbed scanners. They each cost slightly more, but it served their needs more than just a scanner would have. That wasn’t to say that Uncle Ben’s office didn’t have one of the big ass major yield printers too, it did, but Uncle Ben said that the HR types would appreciate having the chance to print small documents at their desks.

One of the biggest differences in the two setups was in their conference rooms. They were both technologically ready for conference calls and video conferencing, but Uncle Ben’s everything was doubled and the build out itself meant that he could close one of those accordion walls that sub-divided the room so he or his people could hold two different conference meeting at the same time. The next most noticeable difference was that Gwen had a much larger space dedicated to file storage, and a separate one just for KAMA and their property management company’s files. Uncle Ben was dedicated to having everything saved digitally unless it was something they had no choice about and had to keep paper copies because of federal, state and local laws. It was therefore an easy decision to set him up with an additional Buffalo drive to facilitate his greater digital storage needs. I was grateful for all the experience I was gaining through my association with KAMA. The two networks I built for those two businesses were better than anything other businesses their size in Lima would have been able to afford or even manage.

When I took the job, Gwen had already had a domain name, thanks to Artie, so I just had to upgrade its security. From there it was an easy matter of setting it all up and establishing the emails for her and Sunni and the rest of her staff. Uncle Ben was a whole different situation. He had only just stepped out on his own, so I started him out from the ground up. Well, I got it started, set up the hosting server, purchased the domain, that kind of thing and then turned it over to Lauren for the web development. My Baby Cousin was fucking awesome at web development. She did her daddy right and she did her daddy proud.

Lauren created a site that was both aesthetically pleasing and damn near educational. I certainly learned a lot. She had pages that showed the services Zizes Human Resources Management Group offered, others showed the qualifications and certifications of the people who had managed to get past all of Uncle Ben’s stringent demands and requirements. My smart cookie of a cousin even included a link to both SHRM and HRCI so that lay people could read and understand all the extra letters behind all their names. I had to give her mad credit. No one would have believed that it was not only not done by a pro and cost Uncle Ben a metric shit ton of money. But the truth was that it had been handled by a college sophomore who’d concentrated mainly on film studies and finance…one for whom programming was a stress relieving hobby. Once it was up, and Artie had seen it, he had to tweak his mom’s site too. By the end of the school year both businesses had amazeball websites and I wasn’t sure they weren’t going to end up out growing the offices they’d just gotten all set up.

With those two side projects successfully completed, and my work for both KAMA and Rangeman going strong, I was fulfilled and content. I lent my services to a few small non-profits and helped them establish their social media presence but even with making my own self crazy trying to do way too much, I was having so much fun. Lester and Hudson both agreed that I could and did so much without feeling worn out or tired, because I was doing what I loved. I got to do some programming. I got to break social media platforms on a semi-regular basis. Everyday there were more republican candidates entering the twenty-sixteen presidential campaign and I had so much fun tearing them apart on my own social media accounts. Those that Sam, Cedes or Puck took a particular dislike to, like say Ted Cruz and Ben Carson…those guys I got to shred in my professional capacity as well. And, after we spent a week with KAMA on the tour, Lester and I took a little four day, long weekend, mini-vacation spending a weekend in Hilton Head. 

The way things worked out, that Friday after the buses left Atlanta to go to the South Carolinian capital city, Lester and I caught a flight to Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport and rented a cherry red, Chevy Camaro Convertible. We had an a-may-zing lunch at a waterfront restaurant called Love’s Seafood. I’d found it online and decided that it was perfect. After devouring some ridiculously good shrimp n’ grits, and their Bubba Gump Shrimp and an eight ounce ribeye, between the two of us, we drove to the South Beach Marina Inn where Lester had gotten us an quaint little one bedroom, two bathroom suite that had a kitchenette and loft. Plus, it was only like a second’s walk to the beach. But before we could really get settled, we had to hit a mall. The vacation had been somewhat spur of the moment and neither of us really had any beachy clothes with us. Lester was one of those people who loved clothes. It was almost unnatural how much he loved clothes, it really was. Usually, I didn’t let it bother me, after all a case could be made that I was the same way when it came to my tech. But just like me with my tech, he was a little specific about where he wanted to go and shop. Since I didn’t care, I let him do him. So, we ended up at the Tanger Outlets. My entire contribution to the excursion was creating a list of what I felt we’d need for four days of fun in the sun and four nights of romance and lovemaking. The way I figured it, I needed four swimsuits, a decent dress and heels, some lingerie and regular underwear and a few pairs of shorts and walk around tops. Lester would need less but want more. Thank God, I was in comfortable shoes.

We hit the Leggs, Hanes, Bali store first so I could get some more bras and panties. I found so many cute pieces, nothing that qualified as lingerie, but I only wore lingerie on date nights anyway. I found some extra cuddly pajamas and got a bunch of stuff that had Lester chuckling at me…including some tights. But hell, they were on sale and like HBO had been saying all summer, winter was coming. From there we went to the Adidas store, I do not know how Lester talked me into getting running clothes and sports bras tops…but I ended up with two sets of exercise clothes and new running shoes. He grabbed new stuff too, but that was to be expected. I’d noticed a long time before that all the Rangemen loved exercise and all its associated accoutrements. We went from Adidas to PacSun and I found some really cute walk around clothes, not all of it just for that trip either. I found a gorgeous, maxi dress that would be perfect for a date night while we were down there. I hadn’t actually planned to look at the swim wear there, just because I thought of them as a place for surfers. Lester wasn’t that limited in his thinking. He pulled several and talked me into trying them all on. I tended to be more comfortable with one pieces, but living with health foodie, Hudson and getting sucked into exercising with Kama for over a week had done a body good. I was looking pretty fucking fantastic in the bikinis that Lester found for me. When we left PacSun, I truly believe that after that stop, we just needed to hit a shoe store…I was so not considering how much Lester loved clothes and me…and me in sexy clothes.

Lester looked at me as we made our way towards the next store and all of me felt beautiful. I loved the fact that Lester had never once asked me why I didn’t wear my contacts more often or why I didn’t curl and-slash-or straighten my hair, or wear more makeup or a less bold lipstick. No matter what, Lester always looked at me with love, want, desire and need. So, when he asked me the question that followed the heated look, I actually contemplated it. “Darcy…I love how you look when you’re dressed down…I love how you look when you’re dressed for a professional occasion or event…I fucking love how you look when you’re not dressed at all. And I also love how you look when you’re dressed for a club or just because you’re feeling naughty. Can I pick you out some things and you wear them out and about while we’re here?”

I waited for the feeling of inadequacy or inadequacy based anger that I truly expected to start surging inside me. It didn’t come. I waited for the feminist outrage. It did not come. Instead, I found that I only had two concerns. “Okay, two things…finding clothes off the rack for curvy girls is not easy, like at all. And second, if you dress me like I’m guessing you’re wanting to, are you going to go all crazy if guys look at me? Because, seriously the girls get mad attention when I’m not dressed up like your dirty fantasy chick.”

Lester’s smile managed to be lascivious and possessive and protective all at the same time. “Gorgeous, you don’t know how sick I am. Because while I guarantee that I will keep you safe from any attempts at disrespect…I love watching men’s reactions to you. I don’t know how you don’t see it, but we can be in a club just dancing and some ‘wish he was me’ will start checking you out, sometimes to the point of ignoring the model thin chick he’s with and I can see it in his eyes, that he knows that you are the hottest woman in that entire place and he would drop old girl in a second if you gave him any signal at all that you even might want him, but you never do. Because you’re with me…because you chose me. Its fucking hot as hell.” He confessed. “And don’t even get me started on how hot it is when their dates are checking you out too.” His eyes were several shades darker and I was sure that if I’d checked, I’d have found him more than half hard.

How could I not kiss the hell out of him…if my boobs hadn’t been all sweaty and gross, I’d have probably shoved his face between them as a reward for that hot little tidbit of honest. I decided that his honesty had to be reciprocated. “If you’re sick…then so am I, because I might not see the looks men give me, but I do see how women look at you. And yeah, knowing that you chose me from all of those chicks to make your long-term lover…it does make me very, very happy in my lady parts.”

He growled sexily. “Gorgeous, you know I’ve been with a lot of women, but none of them have ever made me feel the way you do. I’ve never met someone so open and honest about who they are. You live life as if you have zero fucks to give and with a bravery that is just unbelievable. That is the sexiest thing about you and when you consider that amazing rack and your diligence in your Kegel exercises, that’s saying a lot. You’re fucking perfect for me.”

“Well, to be worthy of your admiration, I guess it’s only fair that I tell you that if I was more comfortable with the idea of arrest…I’d blow you here and now and not give a fuck who saw or who watched.”

Lester pulled me into what hopefully looked like a simple hug from the outside. “Darcy…you don’t know what kind of man I really am. You should not say things like that to me. Fuck…Come on…shit. I need to sit down.”

We found a bench neat the Sketcher’s outlet, we were sure as hell going in there next, and Lester was able to sit down with his legs splayed wide enough for me to stand between then. I liked being taller than him for a little while. “It’s a little too late for the ‘you’re too sexually sick for me’ talk that Stephanie warned me about.” I replied with a hint of something I was calling sarcasm.

Lester huffed. “If Beautiful knew some of the thoughts Primo had about her after those distractions, she would have run screaming.”

I smirked. “If your cousin knew some of the things that Stephanie was thinking after some of those distractions…he’d have realized that he was fooling himself a hell of a lot earlier.” I laughed humorlessly, throwing myself to the bench beside him. “It’s funny really…every Black person I know swear that all white girls are freaky as hell…but you and Ranger both, seem to think we’re all as pure as the driven snow. I’m not saying I’m a complete freak-a-leek, but until today…I was almost positive that some of my fantasies would forever be fantasies.” I hesitated.

“Like what?” Lester said wrapping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me close. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.” I rested my head on his shoulder and nodded. For the next few minutes, Lester laid out a fantasy that so closely mirrored my favorite ‘Lester’s in Trenton, guess I have to take care of my needs all by my lonesome’ masturbatory fantasy it was almost surreal. “There are clubs in New York that take a private membership to attend.” He started again. “Some cater to the real hardcore BDSM types, others to people like me…people, I think if I’m right about where this conversation is going… people like you. People who like to put on a show…perform for a crowd.” I bit back a whimper, desperately not trying to either break the spell or do something that would totally get us arrested. “I am nobody’s dominant, not the way they mean it in most of those places, but I would love to fill a special closet or wardrobe with outfits for you to wear just to a certain club I know of. I’d pick your outfit from the skin out, you’d take all the care you could with primping and dressing…because you’d know that every eye would be on you. Even if we never took the stage, you’re too gorgeous, too beautiful, to sexy and we look too hot together for anyone not to watch us as we eat or dance or play.”

“Fuck…” I breathed.

“Oh yeah…but not at first. I’d want to watch your eyes go sapphire as I licked and sucked your beautiful tits before that…and even they would have to wait until I got my full of dancing and making out with you on the dance floor.” He said before he pressed a kiss against my temple. “I love dancing with you Darcy. I love doing everything with you…even just sitting here people watching while we talk about exhibitionism and voyeurism and whatever is locked in that gorgeous head of yours. But I’m gonna hold off on that until we get back to our room. Probably only because Ranger would KILL me if I got you arrested for public indecency.”

I laughed. “He probably would, but only if Stephanie wanted him to. Otherwise it would upset your YaYa and we both know that you and all of your cousins are more afraid of that than you are of going to war or being dropped in the Atacama with just a divining rod.”

Lester looked down at his lap. “Oh good…that killed that erection.” He muttered. “I’m going to need you to never again mention YaYa that soon after we’ve been talking about any sexual topics, let alone kinky, freaky ones.”

My laughter that time drew attention…more than we needed in the moment, so we got up and headed into the Sketchers outlet store. The comfort flip flop mecca. I ended up with like six pairs of super comfortable thong sandals and wedges in a variety of designs and colors. Lester brought two pairs, one black and one deep wine colored…both were flats and looked really athletic and he was happy. After we left Sketcher’s, we headed to the Michael Kors followed quickly by Saks off Fifth and Lester started playing dress up. He didn’t stick to just club apparel either. He found me some seriously sexy day and career dresses. Some sexier walking around vacation apparel, some even sexier bikinis, and the shoes, aw man the shoes. My legs and ass looked amazing in the shoes he picked. Though most of it was stuff that I would never have picked for myself…I looked amazing in every piece of clothing or pair almost ridiculously high heels. I’d been paying for all my own purchases until Lester took over choosing and from there, when I tried to pay for anything, he smacked my hand or ass and told me that his choice, his cash.

We finally took our happy asses back to our room and dropped it all off before we walked to the Salty Dog Café, a Hilton Head must visit restaurant. The food was pretty good. It was a family restaurant, so we kept our conversation as family friendly as possible. “So, beach tomorrow afternoon?” I suggested happily.

“Hell yeah, beach tomorrow afternoon, then we’re gonna get all dolled up and going out for dinner…then dancing. I’m going to make sure that you know every time men or women are drooling over you. Make sure that you know every single dirty, freaky, nasty thing I’d do for that particular person as our audience. You’re going to do the same and then when we have had as much fun dancing as any person ever, we’ll come back here and fuck each other until all we can manage to do Sunday is lay out on the beach and rest.”

“Sounds like my kind of weekend. But Monday, I’d love to go to the Historic Charleston City Market Monday morning.”

“We can definitely do that. Maybe have lunch somewhere there in Charleston then drive back to Savannah for our flight.” He agreed.

It was an amazing vacation. Lester catered to my every need or whim and all he asked in return was that, if I didn’t have a major objection to something he picked, I’d wear what he selected for the entire three remaining days we were in the resort town. Saturday morning after we made love, again, we had breakfast at an amazing place called Stacks. The pancakes were so good that the only thing that stopped me from ordering seconds was the fear of having a food baby in which ever of the bikinis Lester decided that I needed to wear that day. which turned out to be a retro, red bandana looking, halter top one with tie side bottoms that Lester had found at H&M. I paired it with a white, halter top, lace maxi-dress cover up that was kind of sheer. I put my hair up on top of my head in a bun and slipped my feet into a pair of white, wedge thong sandals, grabbed my glasses case which contained my prescription sunglasses. Lester handed me a reusable shopping bag we’d gotten the day before and I threw our stuff inside.

We spent the day either playing in the water or laying out under the hot southern sun. Lester made a point of reapplying my sunscreen every hour. As he rubbed the thick, protective cream into my skin, he talked to me about the people around us. “You’re gonna make those kids so sad. If their daddy spends any more time watching your sexy ass, their mommy is so gonna divorce him…oops, never mind, Mommy’s watching us too.” It was great.

Until, Lester went to go and get us some water. We’d decided to stay a while longer before we headed up to get ready for our romantic date night. Not long after he left, an older man and his super young companion set up shop way too fucking close. The guy had looked to be in his later forties, with dark brown hair and one of those ‘I’ve still got it’ dad bods. He was definitely one of the more fit men on the beach, but he had nothing on my Lester. The chick with him was clearly a trophy. She was maybe my age…maybe. She had long blonde hair and surgically enhanced lips and tits on a size nothing body. The rock on her finger was big and blinding. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except that the old guy started trying to strike up a flirtatious conversation…with me…with his wife sitting right next to him. It really didn’t help that there was something niggling me at the back of my mind about him. Some weird sense of déjà vu or something even though I’d never seen him before in my life.

Lester came back with our water and I was sure that he could see the relief in my face. That relief turned to shock, horror and disbelief when Lester introduced himself to the man who was clearly flirting with me and disrespecting his trophy wife. “Richard Deal, and this is my new bride Amy, we’re here on our honeymoon.”

“Holy shit, you’re such a sick bastard, you were just flirting with your own daughter.” Lester blurted out while all I could do was start laughing hysterically…and I meant that in the most literal sense of the word hysterical.

Richard Deal took off his sunglasses and there in his face were eyes I saw every time I looked in the mirror. “My only daughter is only six years old and lives with her mother in Alpharetta Georgia.” He said in denial.

I stood and took off my own sunglasses, showing him his eyes reflected back at him. “No, the only daughter you acknowledge is six and lives with your second wife. My mother was Amelia Denisof. You met her when she was fifteen, started sexing her when she was sixteen and by the time you were done, she was addicted to Xanax and oxycontin and I was on the way. You should remember her, after all she is the only time any of your ‘beloveds’ parents tried to have you charged.”

“That bitch lied.” He growled. “Sorry to tell you sweetie, but Amelia was already popping pills when I met her.” Then he looked me up and down, “you do have her fabulous rack though…I think yours are even bigger.”

I just laughed. “Wow, so first you’re lying to try to victim blame, then you’re perving on my breasts even though you know that you can’t deny that I’m your biological daughter. And I do mean just biology. I have a father and he’s a thousand times the man you’ll ever be.”

He just shrugged. “I guess I, technically could be your biological father. You do look quite a bit like your mother. I was with Amelia; I never denied that. But then again, Amelia was with a lot of men. She could be bought for a smile and quick, ‘you’re so pretty’. I guess low self-esteem must run in the family since you’re here with that Spic.”

Lester laughed in his face. “I’m not Mexican, you bigoted asshole. And no one has more self-esteem than my gorgeous girlfriend. She is amazing. Oh, and I’ve met Amelia Denisof Lewis, she is the very epitome of loyal. I’ve read those old police reports, she firmly believed that you loved her and you were going to marry her as soon as she was old enough.”

“In fact, my mother stayed loyal to you until the day you got engaged to your first wife.” I snarled. That no good mutherfucker could say what he wanted to about me…but I’d be damned if he was going to talk about my mother like that. “Amy, I’d watch it…Dear old Dad,” yeah the sarcasm was real, “He marries all his wives before they can legally drink and divorces them before they hit thirty.” I warned her, not out of compassion…but just to be a bitch. It had the advantage of being the truth.

Whether she had the intellectual capacity to respond, we’ll never know because Dick proved his own lack thereof, he looked completely unconcerned. “That is your version of events. You are nothing and no one. I am a Deal of the Georgia Deals. I have connections you can only dream of. Not that they are necessary, any possible charges would have had to been filed twenty-five years ago.”

“You’re right, you got away with what you did to Darcy’s mother. You’ve probably always gotten away with what you do to young girls and women. But one day, you’re going to get caught with your hand in an underage cookie jar. That kind of sickness doesn’t go away, it never gets better. Wifey number three is what twenty? And I’m willing to be that you’ll have an even younger mistress set up somewhere within a couple of months. Probably, she’ll have just turned sixteen.” Lester said with a deadly seriousness. “When you slip and get fooled into thinking some chick is older than the age of consent, I’m going to be there to help with your arrest and conviction.” He vowed.

“And I’m going to be there in that courtroom every single day of your trial to make that jury think about the fact that you have a daughter who is older than the victim and you should have known better.” I hissed. We gathered our stuff and headed back to our room having gotten the last word and happy for it.

After that, Lester offered me the option to stay in or even if I did still want to go out, we could go lower key…and I could pick my own clothing. I shook my head. “I want what you promised me. I want a weekend of semi-naughty kink negotiation. Because that’s what we’re really doing here. Seeing how much of what I dream of I can actually handle. I want to know.”

“Okay.” He said simply. I loved how he trusted me to know what I wanted or needed.

I did take a long ass shower. I’d spent a good portion of the day in the sun and the best I’d managed was to be less glowingly pale and more just plain glowy. When I was done, drying my hair to a livable level of dampness, I quickly threw it into a thick ass four strand, Dutch braid. There was no sense in my having my hair down in that humidity. Yes, Hermione Granger was totally my spirit animal…but I didn’t want to look like her. Once my hair was done, I headed into the bedroom to see what I’d be wearing. I could hear the shower running in the second bathroom and knew that he’d left his shower until he’d heard mine stop. That was kind of him. I gathered myself and smiled when I saw the pretty black with floral embroidery plunge bra and matching thong set that Lester’d found at the Lane Bryant outlet. It was a deeply plunging bra and the shape of the cups would match the sweetheart neckline of the BCBGMAXAZRIA, sleeveless, babydoll, mini dress he’d picked for me to wear that evening and night. The flowers embroidered on the sexy lingerie would match the red of the dress perfectly. Rather than sticking with black or red shoes, he’d set out a pair of sparkle, crinkled, metallic, leather platform pumps from Giuseppe Zanotti that matched the other color of the embroidery of my lingerie, a deep, burnished pewter.

I was rubbing lotion into my soft, if more toned than I’d even been before in my life, body…grateful as hell for the spa day I’d enjoyed with the KAMA crew when Lester came in wearing just a thick, white towel around his waist. “Do not even look at me like that, Gorgeous. We’ve got reservations at six-thirty.”

I pouted a little bit, but I finished dressing. I wasn’t in the mood for a whole lot of makeup. I fully intended to dance my ass off and didn’t want it to melt off onto my dress. Besides, I was taking full advantage of the facial I’d gotten a few days before and the sun-kissed glow I was rocking. So, I just gave my eyes kohl wings, hit the upper lids with some silver shimmer and let mascara be my friend. My lips were moisturized, lined and given a bright, bold red paint job. I mentally went through the limited jewelry I had with me. In went a pair of largish diamond solitaire earrings, and on went a silver and diamond pendant necklace that was long enough to draw every eye to the swell of my breasts. It was a somewhat unnecessary redirection, even I could barely stop looking at the girls in this dress. I made sure that I had everything I needed in my purse. When I pushed my feet into those amazing heels, I gained five inches of height and my gait immediately changed.

“Fuck, you’re so fucking sexy.” Lester breathed drawing my eyes to him. I’d been avoiding looking at him as he dressed lest all our plans ended up being thrown out of the window. He’d paired a pair of deliciously cut Armani slacks with an ivory Henley that was tight enough to make his pecs and arms look amazing, but clearly high end enough that his admittance was guaranteed anywhere. He was considering doing away with his blonde tips and had decided months ago to grow his hair out, so there was a bit of a dichotomy with how great he smelled and how put together over all he was…and his slightly scruffy looking hair.

I licked suddenly parched lips and returned the compliment. “And you think you aren’t? I want to throw my panties at you like you were a fucking rock god, Dude.”

“We’d better go, now.” Lester moaned as he gave me a very quick kiss. “Or I’m going to end up fucking you here and now.”

My boyfriend was legitimately the best. He’d made reservations for the two of us at OMBRA Cucina Rustica on the main road of the island. The restaurant was lovely and intimate. The food was delicious and I kind of wanted to move in and force them to cook for us for every single meal. We talked about my work, not just with KAMA and Rangeman, but I was working with some smaller non-profits in New York and the tiny non-profit in Lima that Gwen had had to create to handle the expenses of Sam’s signature philanthropy project, the Allen County Family Shelter. I proudly told him how close I was to paying off my student loans. “The only thing is…that I have no clue what to do after they are paid off. I mean, my original ten-year plan was to rent as cheap a place as I could stand until I paid those off and then spend two years paying the money I’d been putting towards my loans into a savings account to buy a house. But now, should I keep up the same plan, just pulling it forward. Should I stay with Hudson and just save for the future? I love Huds, she’s like the sister I never thought I wanted. But, I’ve always dreamed of having my own space. I went from Mom to Pop-Pop and Grandma back to Mom then her and Dennis…then it was off to college, but I always had a roommate, and now Hudson.”

Lester let me get it all out never advising, just listening. Finally, he asked me if there was a length of time I wanted to be on my own, or what would determine when or if I ever wanted to live with someone again. “Is there something that would make you need to move within the next year or so?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t really say. I mean, if I won the lottery, I’d pretty much have to buy a place just for the tax shelter. But I’d never want to move to the ‘burbs or anything. A nice condo or something would work perfectly. No yard to mow and someone else to call when something breaks.” we shared a laugh at our shared philosophy.

Lester directed the conversation to a discussion of Rangeman; things like the increases in their profits since I’d increased their online presence. We talked about the other ways to make the business grow. Most people thought that Laster was just one of the men of Rangeman, but he, Tank, and Bobby were a part of Ranger’s core leadership team. Hal was joining the four of them and the heads of the Atlanta, Boston and Miami offices. “The original plan was that the four of us would all split up and do as Ranger has Hal doing, setting up and running an office. Tank was going to set one up in New Orleans, I was either going to have LA or New York and Bobby would have the other. Unfortunately, as we were getting ready to start the next expansion, the recession hit. In addition to that set back, marketing on the whole completely changed and without the ability to do what you’ve done for us, we were getting stagnate…just treading water. Things were good and we were making consistent profits, but not necessarily enough to grow things the way we wanted to. When we got the call asking us to provide protective services for a group of underage popstars, we really wanted to say no, but Beautiful was having none of it. You see, she’d seen what we hadn’t. She actually watches award shows. She realized that they were good kids who were being forced to make big changes because their life was happening so fast. Steph said that she had a good feeling about us taking that contract. We couldn’t doubt her, all of us have seen how her feelings can come to fruition. But this time, I really think that even Beautiful is shocked by how much good has come about since we signed on to provide body guard services to them. Ranger said that even with the cost of expanding into the Midwest, we couldn’t afford to wait. We needed to reorganize the New York office. It needs a real head, more guys and, with the new Warner Contract, we have got to go bigger.”

“Wow, that’s awesome.” I said sincerely. “So, how is it going to be accomplished?”

He gave me a bright smile. “Well, the Trenton office will be kind of downsized…but only in a technical sense of the word. Instead of being our headquarters, it would be a satellite office like New York is now. Since it would be a lesser office, the current manager of the New York office would be moved down to Trenton and the Core Team and Beautiful would relocate here. Primo is still debating whether to buy one of the buildings near our current NYC offices and turn those into apartments for us and the men and then redecorating the fifth and sixth floors of the Rangeman building into more offices and client meeting rooms…maybe even a secondary monitor room just for off-site monitoring of our biggest clients like the Warner properties and the like. The second option would be to sell the current building and buy something that would work more like the current Rangeman building model.”

“So, what I’m hearing is that in the next what eight to ten months, you’ll be moving to New York…like I can see you every other day or so…rather than every other week?” I asked him, trying not to sound too hopeful.

Lester gave me a long slow smile but shook his head. “Probably closer to twelve to eighteen months. Maybe even as long as a full two years. It would actually take a little less time to start from scratch. Hal is on track to have his office fully staffed and open by the end of the year, January at the latest. We’re giving the New York guys who wanted to transfer to Trenton with their CO the chance to do so…which means time to get their shit together. We’re also letting those closest to Beautiful transfer up here too. It’s a whole big thing. Plus, getting the transfers licensed to carry in their prospective new states, which takes a while all by itself.”

I thought of something. “How is Steph gonna handle being that far from her mother?” It seemed like every time I was face to face with Stephanie, she was fielding calls from her mom and spoke as if she saw her every day.

Lester laughed. “She’s looking forward to it. The better question is ‘how is Helen taking the thought of her daughter being that far from her’…not well. As I understand it, Abuela Edna had to finally have a serious come to Jesus talk with Beautiful’s mom.”

“Now, I’ve really gotta make sure my student loans are paid off. With Ruth Mayzer and Stephanie Plum in the same city, my clothing allowance is gonna have to go up.” I joked…kind of.

He laughed and signaled for the check. We settled up and headed out to our rental car. “You know…I never thought that I would be in a committed relationship with a woman. But I love you more than I ever thought myself capable of loving another person.” He said seriously as he took my hand. 

I pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I never thought that I’d trust anyone enough to put my heart on the line. It still bugs me out that I can feel like you’ll never hurt me on purpose…and would actually care if you did by accident. I don’t know how you managed it, but I love you too.” I told him honestly. Then I had to lighten the mood. “Okay, the sex is incredible so that could be a big part of it…”

“I personally blame your incredible rack and your unbelievably tight cocha.” He smiled giving back as good as he’d received as he held the door to the car for me.

We exchanged goofy and-slash-or sexy reasons that we’d come to love each other for the first half of the two-hour drive to Charleston. When we exhausted that topic, we talked about current events and such like that. I, as Sam and Puck, was having to discuss the death of Trump way too much on social media and I was whining about it a little, so Lester started coming up with ridiculous ways to address it next time, in character. His Sam sounded like a mix between Foghorn Leghorn and Rhett Butler and his Noah sounded like Fran Dresher’s long-lost love child. I laughed so hard I almost regretted not using the bathroom again before we left the restaurant.

Of course, with Lester driving, there was about half an hour shaved off the driving time. We got to Trio Lounge around ten. The place was nicely crowded. The cocktails weren’t watered down and the DJ was awesome, almost as good as Cassidy. Perhaps best of all for our purposes, the dance floor was pretty packed. Lester had reserved us a VIP table…which turned out to be totally necessary. Every time we hit the floor, I made sure to pay attention to the men and women around us. There were a fair few women tracking our every movement, but I’d totally expected that. I was really surprised by how many, seemingly, heteronormative Caucasian males were looking at us. We went to sit out for a while after being a little bit goofy while dancing to ‘Hotline Bling’. I leaned close to Lester and whispered. “I think you’re making that dude over there in the Tom Ford slacks have a ‘sexuality questioning’ moment.” I teased.

Rather than get offended, Lester just laughed. “Nope. Sorry Gorgeous, he’s looking over here wondering what he’d have to do to ascertain for himself if your amazing tetas are as real as we both know they are.”

“He looks like a real good old boy done good…are you sure you think he’s looking at me?” I asked again. Then I checked him over and noticed that his eyes were swung a little more my way than Lester’s. There were so many eyes on my boobs, and I was so very used to ignoring those, it must have been throwing me off.

However, the guy next to him was definitely not straight and he sashayed his way over to us. “Hi y’all, my name is Adrian. My brother Jeff and I were really hoping and praying that the two of you are just besties out to get their dance on so that I could, if I should be so blessed, spend a little time with you sir, and he could get to know the lovely lady a bit better.” His accent was so thick, I was almost positive that he was heaping it on.

“Sorry, Adrian, I’m straight and we’re together.” Lester said with a charming smile. “But for the record…because my gorgeous girlfriend and I may have been trying to figure out something…you were staring at me but he was staring at her. Right?” I noticed that he’d never introduced us. It wasn’t his way to give that kind of information to strangers.

Adrian gave him a weird look, but he did answer. “Yeah. I mean, I may have looked her over a bit at first. Those shoes are amazing and her bra is a miracle worker…because those puppies are the real deal and yet defying gravity. But mainly I was checking out that beautiful mound of flesh God blessed you with in lieu of a regular ass, and Jeff was trying not to look like he was stripping your lady friend naked in his mind.”

We shared a laugh and conversed just a bit more before Adrian went back to report to Jeff and Lester turned to me and asked me a question without ever saying a word. “I like the thought…I still really love the thought of it. But I don’t like having someone too close to us in an intimate moment. At a place where we were anonymous and so were they, like one of those clubs you mentioned, that I could totally see myself…us…doing. But I don’t think you could relax with some miscellaneous dude there while we’re getting down. I know that I’d feel bad being all ‘lookie no nookie’ to that guy or even that redhead over there who’s salivating all over the mere thought of you.” 

After a long slow deep kiss that made my insides melt and my lady parts stand to attention begging for more, Lester pulled me back onto the dance floor. The rest of the night, we danced teasing each other and all those around us. At one point, Lester led me into a spin that made my skirt flare all the way up and showed the whole place my thong revealed ass. I’d have been embarrassed except, I could have sworn I heard a pretty strawberry blonde lady just a bit younger than Lester comment, “damn, her ass is as sexy as her tits.” I liked it when people other than me appreciated my body…it was a damn fine one, no matter what those skinny-minnie chicks say.

Lester heard her too, though he didn’t say anything until we were walking back to our car and saw her leaving as well. “I think she really would love to see you naked Darling Darcy…you sure that you don’t want to go back to her place. We could make up fake names and perform for an audience of one.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, naw. I think my particular shade of voyeurism is more of the public performance kind of deal. The thought of more interpersonal voyeurism just doesn’t may my lady parts stand up and say howdy.” Then I gave him a side eye, “why do you want to?’

He too shook his head. “No, like you, if we’re going to do it, I want us to take every precaution. A club where no one but management has even the slightest clue who we are, where masks are a thing we could add and the people watching would only think it sexier…I’d prefer it like that too.”

Once we were sure that we were definitely on the same page, we tabled the application ideas until we could work it so that we had the ideal scenario. Of course, that didn’t mean that we couldn’t and didn’t enjoy the fantasy and damn if we didn’t sex each other so good that night that we never did make it to the beach the next day. We did discover another kink of mine. I loved being praised for my performance in bed. Hearing how sexy I was or how good I felt or how responsive my body was, it just did something to me. Sunday, we just lazed about, making love whenever we decided we felt like it. then we went and had another amazeballs seafood dinner. After dinner, we did go for a long walk. I had to burn some more calories to get rid of my seafood-baby. Monday, we took another trip to Charleston and hit the Charleston City Market, and even though it meant getting up and packed and checked out at the ass crack of dawn, it was totally worth it. I couldn’t say which I loved more the Sweetgrass baskets, the artisan botanical beauty products or the handmade jewelry. Oh, or the food. We ended up having to stop by a Fed Ex store and ship all our stuff back to our apartments. It was either that or buy suitcases and have to pay those ridiculous baggage fees.

The drive back to Savannah and the flight back to Newark was filled with a ton of laughter. I didn’t realize how many selfies and pics we’d managed to take of each other during our time on the road and our mini-vacay. Lester, like all the Rangemen, had some pretty fucking serious enemies that they had made while in service to our nation, so I was careful to only post pics of the two of us where there was no way to identify him. But I did make sure to put up proof of how incredibly sexy my man was…hey, I had enemies too, just petty ones from high school. We actually said goodbye at the airport and I just took the subway home, Lester’s local family had given him a ride back to Trenton. That had taken some serious convincing. It worked better for him, but he didn’t like not seeing me all the way back to my door. But I was an independent woman and I had my taser. I dared anybody to fuck with me. Tuesday, I slept in a little, but after that it was back to the grind. The rest of the summer was spent making sure that KAMA’s online presence was the best money could buy, and on a merchandising side project for KAMA that Daniel and I were sure was going to be at least a decent money maker. We selected twenty-five holiday or gift themed items and set up a special holiday store on the KAMA site. We had cute sweaters and Ugly Holiday Hoodies and of course the ‘ChristmaKah’ CDs. By the time we all had to fly out to LA for the VMAs, we had all the merch prepared and the site was all ready to go live on Labor Day. That would give shoppers time to look it over, save their money, and still get their orders in in time to receive their stuff before Christmas…though maybe it’d be cutting it close for Chanukah.

When we flew out to LA, Lester and Tank were both with us. I’d worried that there was an increase to the threat level, but it turned out that two of the guys needed to head back to Trenton to get their physicals and other yearly evaluations done, so my honey and Tank would be taking their place on the last week of the US part of the tour. I had a shit ton of work to do or I’d have gone through Cali and the Pacific Northwest with them. Instead, Lester and I just agreed that once he was back and KAMA was back in school, we’d go to the club we’d spent the rest of the summer after we got back from Hilton Head jumping membership hurdles to join. Yeah, having Ethan look over that membership contract was worth every single thing ever. It was slightly embarrassing so much more funny. But he did me the solid, so I watched EJ and Avery for him, so he and Amanda could spend a kids free, romantic weekend on the Vineyard.

That was one of the most interesting times of my life. I was happy and yet somehow restless. I was truly in love and yet fantasized about doing things with him that most people would consider relationship killers. I was still growing up in certain areas of my life and yet, I was already fully matured in others. It was a little strange to me that at twenty-three, I was still learning about myself. But then I realized that that was what life was…continuing to learn more and more about yourself until you either knew it all or died…whichever came first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear World,   
> We are so sorry that America is such a shitstorm right now. But Mueller is on the job & hopefully soon the fires will be out and we'll just have to worry about traditional political Bullshit once again. 
> 
> America's Citizens.
> 
> To all those who have lost family members in Mass Shootings in the years since 1996, don't let the cowards in Congress get you down, join me in trying to vote them all out and replace them with people with the guts to stand up to the gun lobby. #NotOneMore  
> #SutherlandSprings #Vegas #Orlando #Charleston #Newtown #Aurora 
> 
> As for the rest of my fellow Americans,   
> First of all no matter what political party we're in, lets all agree on one fact that even our criminals acknowledge. THERE IS NOTHING IN THE WORLD WORST THAN A PEDOPHILE. #NoMoore #RoyMooreisaChildMolester  
> Second of all, yes we have sexual degenerates in the Democratic Party. Difference is, we shun, prosecute and usually convict ours. (See third for the exception)  
> Third of all, Repubs, Stop bringing up Monica Lewinsky. She was 22 years old. She was a grown ass woman who was old enough to know better, but had no problem being a man's side piece, because she liked the power he welded. (Or maybe because she was happy to be wanted) Either way, she wasn't a 14 year old little girl. And she has never claimed it wasn't consensual. Kill that false equivalency BS.
> 
> To all my readers,  
> Thank you for still being with me. Let me know what you think of the Chapter.   
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	15. If It Makes You Happy (Sheryl Crow)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Now A Word from Hudson Friedman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.  
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her wonderful help.

Chapter 14

If It Makes You Happy (Sheryl Crow)  
Hudson PoV

I spent the summer of the Aesthetic Enjoyment tour extremely busy. I had fun and experiences that I could only have dreamed of having just a few years before. I gained an undiscovered love of hotels and theme parks. The latter really surprised me. I didn’t consider myself a fan of heights, large gatherings, or noise. But after my first trip on a roller coaster, I found that I was totally and completely hooked. I loved the feeling of flying and falling and yet being firmly, safely strapped down. I was a fan of most thrill rides, really. Something I might never have discovered if, in my early days with KAMA, I’d not been determined to bond with all the members of their Team…at least those present in New York at the time. Haja had taken me antiquing, while Brantley and I had visited Coney Island. He found it an affront against God that I’d lived in the Five Burroughs for most of my life never been to the world renown amusement park. We’d spent the day talking and getting to know each other. He actually gave me some tips for dealing with my shyness. “The trick isn’t to imagine everyone in their underwear, it’s really just to remember that they are human and so they are just as vulnerable as you are. They’re just better at faking it.”

“So, imagine them emotionally naked?” I’d summarized.

“Exactly, Kid. There isn’t a single person you’re going to talk to who doesn’t have their own foibles, insecurities or whatever. Now, in your job, it might do you good to observe and figure out what they are, but me and Haja, we take it a step further. We figure out their vulnerabilities and use those to manipulate them into giving KAMA or whoever, exactly what they want or what we want them to have.”

“You know, you calling me Kid makes very little sense. You’re not that much older than me.” I pointed out.

“Sorry, Cutie…but in this case, it really isn’t the age it’s the mileage.” He semi-apologized. Over the next few months, I realized what he meant. In my shyness and fear, I’d held back from really living life. Brant had never had the opportunity to do such a thing. He had always needed to face facts and live life. There was a certain amount of caution to living life as a young Black man, especially one who was so very steeped in Black and Hip-Hop culture…but he’d never hidden himself away or allowed that caution to become all consuming. I respected that about him.

So during the pre-planning for the tour, when I noticed how close our several of our tour stops came to many theme parks all owned by the same company, I had an idea. I put it before Haja and he thought it would be a great way to build in some fun down time on the tour. Something that both he and Brantley assured me was in the best interest, not only of our bosses, but of everyone on the tour. I negotiated the terms myself. After our contracts were updated for the second year, Haja and Gwen had set us each up with a departmental budget, so there was no need to bother anyone as long as I stayed within my hundred thousand per year executive assistant discretionary budget. To be honest, the deal I worked out was pretty awesome. I didn’t get the sale price for the season tickets, but I did get them to throw in the super expensive Flash Passes and a somewhat bare bones meal pass, all for under ten thousand. I was quite proud of that accomplishment. Especially when I saw how much fun everyone had over the course of the summer.

As much as I enjoyed going to all the different theme parks. As much as I enjoyed experiencing all the small and large churches Mercedes, Sam and Puck found for us to attend whenever there was time on a Sunday morning. As much as I enjoyed all the different cities and states and all the lovely hotel rooms…by the time we hit LA for the VMAs, I was ready for home. I missed Haja, though he’d joined us for a few stops. I missed Brantley, though he too had come on the road a few times. Just to make sure that everything was going well…as if we weren’t in almost constant contact and he wasn’t in actual constant contact with Lamar. Daniel only popped his head in twice…once right after Fort Worth and when we were in Ohio, though the later one was probable more to spend some time with Amara and Amaea than for anything to do with KAMA PR. But he had a lot of work to be done, both for KAMA and for his other clients, that could only be done in the office, so that was to be expected. Darcy joined us a few time as well. I got why she did so. She wanted to make sure that Tessa and Joe had everything they needed and even more, to supervise without them feeling micromanaged, or even knowing it really.

However, the VMAs saw every member of Team KAMA meeting us in Los Angeles. Ethan and Haja were actually waiting on us at the Luxe City Center Hotel when we got there. It seemed that Haja was a busy boy over the summer. He’d managed to broker a deal for Noah and Sam to do some modeling for Calvin Klein. “The thanks actually go to Tessa’s godmother, Samantha, her best friend Isabelle Wright and Joe Hart. Apparently, when Samantha introduced Isabelle Wright…who happens to be an executive over at Vogue…to Joe, she wanted him to do it. Joe said that it wasn’t his thing and reminded her that the two of you actually used to model.”

“Wait, I thought Bieber was doing Calvin Klein?” Mercedes interrupted to ask.

Haja smirked. “He was and still is. But Isabelle, Italo Zucchelli and Mr. Klein, himself, are all banking that your two husbands, individually and together, will be far more profitable for the company than the Biebs.”

“Yeah, how much are they banking on it?” Puck asked cheekily.

Ethan whipped out the paperwork. “They are offering you each twenty million a year for two years…or get this…a hundred and fifty million if you are willing to make a five year commitment.”

“Sheee-it.”

“Damn.”

“Mutherfucker.” Puck said, but his voice was the only one to continue. “Sam, I don’t know about you…But I am so good taking that hundred and fifty million dollar contract.”

Sam nodded. “Hell yeah, we’re taking it. My Momma didn’t raise no fool.”

Ethan smiled and there were some intent papers to be signed. “The rest of the contracts, we’ll handle when you guys get back to New York. Now, I also wanted to let you know that I took care of the transfer of Carmine and Chaz Puckett’s probation to New York state. And between the two of us Mills and I managed to get everything set up for their and the Benson-Pucketts’ apartments in Independence Plaza. It turned out to be entirely too problematic to get them to rent to your elder cousins. However, this complex actually allows residents to sublet their space. So technically, their apartment is being rented by you and you’re subletting it to them. Carmine and Chaz are in a two bedroom and Samantha, Freddie and their triplets are in a three bedroom. I’ve already prepped the contracts for their signatures. As per your stipulations, all the four adults have to do is pay five hundred towards their rent and handle their own utilities.”

“Good.” Mercedes said quietly. “I know that iCarly isn’t doing badly, but I don’t want those babies to have to miss their mommy and daddy because they had to work two jobs and go to school to make their future brighter.”

“I just hope that with Carmine, Chaz and Mrs. Benson in close proximity, there will never be any reason for The Trio to be left alone with Spencer Shay.” Sam said sounding quite relieved. “I mean, the guy seems like a nice enough person…but, from Cousin Sam’s stories, he strikes me as the kind of guy who needs a baby sitter not the kind who should be a babysitter.”

There were some more things that they had to go over, but fortunately, nothing that took very long. Before we were all able to head up to our rooms. Since Darcy and Lester were rooming together, I had a superior room all to myself. It was quite lovely. As much as I had grown to care for Darcy, I was a very solitary kind of person by nature. I unpacked and double checked to make sure that I had everything that I would need for our stay in Los Angeles. I could always go back to the bus, but I prided myself on my efficiency. And it would not have been an efficient use of time to have to go back to the bus because I wasn’t prepared in advance. I set out a nice, but comfortable outfit for our visit to Six Flags Magic Mountain the next day. Then, I went through KAMA’s calendar for the following two weeks, making sure to set reminders for them to email their summer reading journals and the other things that their professors wanted turned in before the first day of classes. I knew that they were all done, even the mock financial statements Cedes and Noah had needed to create for their financial economics class. With all of that accomplished, I took a nice bath and dressed for dinner. That was a nice relaxing meal and then I was able to go to my room and rest for the remainder of the evening. The next day we spent the entire day at Magic Mountain. I rather missed having any of the younger kids with us. They had such joy about being at an amusement park and they tended to act as something of a shield between KAMA and their multitude of fans. We’d arrived at the theme park within half an hour after it opened and within an hour after that, the place was well and truly packed. We weren’t able to stay there all day. We weren’t in LA just for the Staples Center tour stop, we also had the VMAs and that meant that we needed a spa visit. Still, a great time was had by all.

I’d made the arrangements for those who were walking the red carpet, except Bartana who had previously made their own arrangement for that afternoon and evening, to visit the Ritz Carlton Spa in Marina Del Ray. It was Mercedes’ favorite of the spas we’d experienced in the city. She knew the names of the people who took care of us there and they had all the services that we needed. We got there around four that afternoon and didn’t make it back to our hotel until after a lovely, but late, dinner at Sakura House, an unassuming little Japanese place in a small, out of the way strip mall that Rainbow told us about.

Our Staples Center show was really, very awesome. The show was completely sold out and there were so many celebrity VIPs that I found it quite daunting. Of course, in a city the size of LA there was no way that we could avoid the after party, but I helped to make sure that KAMA’s Crew stuck to just one alcoholic beverage and had water or soda thereafter. A few of the newer folks were less than pleased, but I wasn’t going to let them stop me from doing my job. The party somehow became an Event To Be Seen at for a lot of the VMAs nominees and presenters. Pretty much everyone who was anyone was there at the Mayan that night into the morning. I actually kind of liked events like that. I was able to seem like I was interacting with everyone while really all I did was hide in the midst of the crowd and make sure that Sam, Cedes and Noah had everything that they needed. I was confident that I was as efficient as humanly possible and I knew that was able to appear and disappear almost like magic. I also wasn’t trying to shop scripts or demos or otherwise advance a personal agenda. I must have done something right. That night I had six offers from people trying to lure me away from KAMA ranging from one of the Jenner-Kardashians to a Trap star. It was nice to be wanted but I didn’t think there was much of anything that could make me leave my family.

It kind of tripped me out. Did these people really think that I didn’t know why their PAs had sought out other employment? One of them liked to call her PA at three in the morning to let Ms. Star’s dog out. The PA did not live with her employer and would have had to drive across town to do so. Another of the people who tried to lure me away from my bros and sister that night was a guy who liked to make his PA check him for BO before he hit the red carpet. Another was fine as a person themselves, but I knew for a fact that their manager was one of the most horrible person on the face of the planet to those he considered lesser. But the worst was the one who collected event swag and at the end of awards season had tried to get her PA to sell the stuff through their personal EBay account and give the star the cash. All the swag, even things that the PA could fit and-slash-or use. I guess I was spoiled because for the most part, if Cedes, Sam or Puck didn’t want it, I got first dibs. There were exceptions…like the Teen Choice Awards show swag. Tessa, Sarah and Jake had gotten first pick of that stuff, even before KAMA themselves. Yeah, I was quite happy with my bosses, or the principles as most of the other PAs called their stars.

We made it back to the hotel around seven, which was not ideal. Everyone was only able to get a few hours of sleep before the Red Carpet ladies all had to get up, shower and report to the connecting room to Cedes, Noah and Sam’s Platinum Suite which had been turned into a hair and makeup wonderland. Ruth, Darcy and the rest of Team KAMA had arrived the evening before some time during the concert, Ruth and Kurt had transformed the closet and the bathroom of the room next to Commune’s suite making sure that everything that would be needed for the music group to get dressed. The three of us, Darcy, Ruth and I, who’d be with KAMA on the Red Carpet got there early to have the first go with Delilah, Catherine and Catrina to have our hair done. We would do our own makeup later. To make my life easier, I had Catrina braid my hair into two four-strand French Braids and then winding them into a large chignon at the back of my head.

“Ooohhh…I like the braid idea. But I need some hair down.” Darcy told Catherine with a big smile. “Can we do a half up-do with maybe a five-strand braid at the back?” 

“I’ve got you, Doll.” Catherine assured her.

Dee looked at Bubbie. “How do you want your hair. Ms. Ruth?”

Ruth laughed. “Do what you want that won’t take forever so I can handle Mercedes and the guys…but Delilah Darling, I’m too damn old for braids.”

By the time Mercedes, Puck and Sam came through the connecting my vision for my hair had been realized as had Darcy’s. Ruth’s hair was pulled back and up into a thick, intricate bun and everything was in readiness for them. Mercedes came in with her braids undone and her hair washed, but damp. The day we got to LA, she and Catrina sat with a pad and worked out an intricate formal braided hairstyle that consisted of ten braids up to the center of her scalp on each side. Those braids and the center hair would then be braided into three layers of braided mohawk, that would be curled up at the nape of her neck and affixed until it was unmovable. While Catrina was busy, Dee took care of updating Sam’s color and Dani, took care of Puck’s low buzz. Rainbow and Cassidy came in then. Rainbow found herself in Catherine’s seat while Cassidy chatted with us as she waited her turn. It surprised no one that Dave, Artie, Brittany and Santana rolled in last. None of them liked mornings…at all.

Ruth had styled each of the women and Kurt had handled each of the guys, so everything, other than their lingerie and underwear, that they needed to get dressed was there waiting on them in that room. Once Mercedes’ hair was done, she grabbed Bubbie and they disappeared into her suite and she came back in wearing a silk kimono robe rather than the button down and leggings she’d worn when she was getting her hair done. That allowed Dee to begin wielding her airbrush compressor to apply Cedes foundation. The skintone matching MAC foundation made Mercedes already healthy skin look flawless. The current trend tended towards a subtle, neutral makeup for the red carpet. Not Ms. Mercedes Jones. Trina gave her eyes wings then covered her upper lids with a chocolate eyeshadow a few shades darker than her skin. Then Trina’s deft hands did their work with metallic silver over that. It looked great. Cedes’ lips were done in a deep, warm berry wine color that was glossy but not ridiculously so.

While everyone was getting their hair and makeup done, the room was filled with laughter and music. They all joked and teased and sang and danced as they got dressed. Over her black lace and gold satin eyelash lace halter bra and matching thong panties, Mercedes donned a custom-made Spanx shaper slip that like the bra, matched the cutouts of the Maticevski Corrosion, silver and gold, metallic stripe gown. The gown was sleeveless, and the asymmetric silhouette featured a vertical cut-out opening in both the front and back, framing Mercedes Jones’ signature cleavage. The dress then flowed into the voluminous folds of the high-low skirt. The striped design pooled at the hem and opened up into an elegant train. The Australian designer had contacted Ruth after the Grammys with the exclusive unique design. The dress was edgy and yet elegant; it was fashion forward and looked amazing. Bubbie had paired it with a pair of six-inch, silver and gold, peep toe, red bottom pumps. With the, technically, high neckline, the dress wouldn’t work with a necklace, so instead Kurt had found her a silver and gold floral motif antique Victorian sterling silver, rose and yellow gold aesthetic wide cuff bracelet, a Konplott Cages golden shadow crystal antique brass wide cuff bangle bracelet and Holy Lights hollow Gold-color wide wrap geometric big modern fashion arm cuff. The arm band would go around her bare upper arm, while the very different, wide cuff bracelets would decorate her wrists and forearms. The look was completed with a pair of Stazia Loren Diamanté, tassel earrings that were large and long enough that they reached down to Cedes’s shoulders.

Perhaps it said something that I mentally ran down her outfit first when Mercedes was actually one of the last people dressed and ready. Since Santana and Brittany were the first of the KAMA ladies scheduled to arrive at the VMAs they were actually ready first. Ruth had outdone herself with that thruple’s look. Artie was in black True Religion jeans, a white Armani dress shirt and a black and white Neil Barrett contrast-stripe sport coat with a pair of black and white Maison Margiela men's Ace low-top sneakers. She had him in a silver Movado watch and a Tateossian Stonehenge bead bracelet with black, silver and rose gold beads. That bracelet tied him into Brittany’s rose gold cuff bracelets, matching bauble drop earrings and the rose gold and black diamond lariat necklace. Ruth had found for her a midnight black, Redemption, plunging satin halter slip gown that only Brittany could have worn because the rest of the women in KAMA’s camp were kind of addicted to underwear and that dress was not only completely backless, it would have shown even the tiniest pair of panties like crazy. She looked gorgeous with her sun-kissed, natural, makeup and bold pink lip, her blonde hair was fishtail braided back to a deceptively loose looking chignon. She looked elegant and sexy and of course she was Brittany, so she looked very happy too. Santana was decked out, neck to toe in white. Her Zuhair Murad Cady gown had an almost sheer, trellis-style lace top with a jewel neckline and crystal embellishments. The floor length Cady column skirt had a seriously high front slit and the skirt started in a High-rise band which sat above Santana’s natural waist. Thanks to Bubbie and Kurt’s talents, no one would ever realize that both Santana’s and Brittany’s dresses had been bought off the rack and each one tailored to look as custom as Mercedes’ gown. Santana’s long hair was straightened completely and then slicked back from her forehead and temples into a half up style only for the sleek, almost black locks to be turned into a five or more-strand fishtail braid that ended at her backside. Her makeup was beautiful. Not as bold as Mercedes’ nor as natural as Brittany’s…but very much Santana.

That trio had to be down stairs no later than two thirty to make their limo in time to be in their spot for their three twenty scheduled arrival at the Microsoft Theater. Kurt was going with them to act as their stylist/PA on the Red Carpet. He was in an unobtrusive navy blue Brooks Brother’s suit that he’d added a bit of flair to with a broach that actually had Bluetooth and was connected to his cell phone in case of an emergency. Dave and Cassidy were the next to leave. Dave was pretty easy. He was rocking a pair of three hundred-dollar Brunello Cucinelli spa contrast-trim sweatpants, a charcoal gray, John Varvatos Henley, a Lanvin Attitude two button soft blazer…and a pair of mint condition red, black and white Air Jordans that cost at least as much as the sweatpants…and added some color to his pretty much gray ensemble. Even his Meistersinger watch had a gray band. As blah as Dave’s color scheme was, Cassidy was going the exact opposite route. Her bright, mint green Badgley Mischka dress had a ballet cut bodice with spaghetti straps, princess seams and a racerback. The gown’s skirt had godet ruffles and a handkerchief hem. Despite the classy dress and simple silver jewelry…Cass went hard for her shoes, hair and makeup. A pair of black Sophia Webster Mila suede, cutout, peep-toe booties showed off her inner Rockstar. Delilah amplified her natural curls and braided three braids back from her right temple while allowing the left side total freedom. Her makeup was flawless with super dark kohl line, purple and white shading above the lid and a matte purple lip…she looked righteous and edgy and fierce and yet…a tad sweet. It was an interesting projection…but she pulled it off.

The two friends headed down once Darcy had taken care of the photos for the KAMA blog which wouldn’t go up until after the event. We didn’t want to step on the toes of the entertainment journalists after all. Rainbow was the next to leave the dressing room. Dee and Trina had handled her between the two of them. Delilah had turned her sleek black hair into a super sleek highish ponytail that looked kind of severe in a sexy kind of way…I understood the concept better after working with Puck and Santana for a while. The hair went well with her navy and black Jonathan Simkhai Collection Beaded Fringe Jumpsuit. she accessorized it with five pieces of Adriana Orsini’s Anise Crystal jewelry collection. Rainbow had layered a choker and longer necklace, and both her arms and ears dripped with the star anise shaped crystal jewelry. Her Valentino Garavani Exclusive Ankle Strap Pumps were black and high and I envied the grace with which she moved even on five and a half inch stilettos. Then again, like Brittany, everything Rainbow did looked like dancing. Blaine headed out with Rainbow to act as her minion and to meet up with his fiancé there.

Sam and Noah were both rocking differently cut Ralph Lauren suits, black Nigel cut for Puck and navy Morgan cut for Sam. With the suits they each wore different colored John Varvatos Henleys, Puck’s was burgundy and Sam’s was charcoal and they wore black boots from Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga, respectively. The only jewelry they wore were their engagement rings, Centrix watches and Iconography necklaces, a crucifix for Sam and a diamond encrusted Star of David for Noah. As soon as Ruth was completely satisfied with the trio, we headed back to our rooms to get dressed. It didn’t take me much time at all to put on the barest possible amount of makeup, add a berry lip gloss and don my nut brown, MILLY double-knit A-line dress, the Easy Street lace up comfort heels that matched it and grab my prepacked and ready vintage chestnut Ghurka Fielding leather messenger bag. I did a quick double check. It contained business cards of all the relevant KAMA peeps, as well as Stephanie Plum and our Rangeman account manager. I had my iPad mini, my cell, KAMA’s professional cell, my wallet and room key. I also made sure that I left one part completely empty. That part would hold everything Cede wanted to carry that didn’t fit in her clutch as well as Sam and Puck’s wallets. 

KAMA really were the last of our people to leave. Haja and Brantley had signed three of KAMA’s opening acts from that summer to their management group and they were walking with two of them. Haja attended with Alessia Cara while Brantley was a member of Todrick Hall’s small entourage. Ethan was managing to avoid the whole deal. He and Amanda had brought Avery and EJ out and they were spending a family day at Disney. There was a large part of me that was a little bit jealous. I shook those counterproductive thoughts off as I went back to the dressing room. Once there, I made sure that Cedes had her Christian Louboutin Vanite patterned leather clutch which contained her driver’s license, one bank card…her oldest account that had the lowest available balance…her lipstick and blotting paper, and a small bottle of hand sanitizer. Her actual wallet, a mini pack of Kleenex, her personal cell, and a few other bips and bobs went into my messenger bag. Sam and Puck handed me their wallets, keeping just some money for tips and their licenses and a single bank card in the money clips that they placed with their room key cards into the breast pocket of their suit coats.

Since Corbin Richardson would likely be in attendance. We were all on high alert. Rangeman had provided all of us on the Red Carpet as a part of Team KAMA with Bluetooth headsets that would allow us to communicate with them and each other as we moved from the limo into the Microsoft Center. We had four Rangemen walking the carpet with us that evening; Tank, Lester, Junior and Binkie. Two of them were, individually, walls of pure muscle with all the know how necessary to take a grown man apart. Lester came across as affable…until you crossed him. Darcy had told me of how she’d finally met her biological father. It had left her more upset and shaken then she would ever admit to, but both Lester and I knew her well enough to suss out her true hurt. He confided in me that he has Hector working on decimating not just Richard Deal, but every member of his family with a skeleton in their closet. And Binkie…he clearly considered the trio to be his people and no way was he going to allow harm to come to them on his watch. In addition to the identifiable protection of the Rangemen, and the expected protection of her husbands, Mercedes had another unexpected line of defense near her side on the red carpet…other than Darcy and the ridiculously illegal and pretty damn lethal taser that she loved so much. Daniel Harris was always nearby acting as KAMA’s PR makager. He also had his orders from Momma Dani and Papa Bent, as well as his own father and both of his uncles. Daniel was to make very sure that no harm came to Mercedes on his watch.

Like Haja and Brantley, Ethan and Daniel were developing their client bases beyond KAMA. And with the way everything shook out after the video scandal and TMZ actually settling a lawsuit, they…especially Ethan… were in pretty high demand. So much so that Darcy said that it was time to for a second receptionist to be hired and for the phone lines to be separated out by wings a lot more than they currently were. Brigid would be relieved. The last time I checked in with her she was getting overwhelmed with the sheer volume of calls that come in every day. Puck was hoping to put off having to do the whole interview/hiring thing until it was time to staff their property management group in a few months. Even though most of the work would fall on Mr. Zizes, none of the trio really looked forward to going through the hiring process more than once.

Daniel, Tank and I rode with KAMA in the Limo to the Microsoft Theater. With the lineup of limos, it came as no surprise that the other six members of our party were waiting on us when the door of KAMA’s limo was opened. The three of us who were not famous, slinked out of the other side and readied ourselves to help them get down the carpet. Mercedes was kind and answered the same questions about who she was wearing a hundred times. She big upped Tony Maticevski and the gorgeous, fashion forward gown he’d designed for her. The thruple actually had fun talking to Giuliana Rancic and to Michael Yo, those were easily their favorite interviewers. By the time they had gotten inside, Mercedes Jones was already considered a shoe-in for all the best dressed lists.

The night was a great success. Todrick was a major part of the preshow. He did a great job covering Bruno Mars, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. His whole set was energetic and just showed the world how awesome he could be. KAMA won two awards during the preshow which made us all very happy. The Best Pop Video was awarded to them for ‘Rub You the Right Way’. That was an extra bit of happiness for the crew since it seemed to give truth to Michael Haussman’s idea that showing the world that Mercedes was sexy not despite her size, but just because she was. That thought was cemented when the very next award was given to KAMA for the same song. There was some wait since the first few categories presented in the televised broadcast just didn’t apply to KAMA. We all enjoyed the performances. Mercedes really loved Demi Lovato…that was definitely a mutual admiration society though because Demi loved Mercedes too.

‘The Ballad of Tamir Rice’ video premiered as the show came back from commercial. It was deeply moving and very touching. From the first scenes in the white playground to the final scenes showing the amazingly inclusive and integrated choir…it was just beautiful. The audience was very much in tears. As was evidenced by Jamal and Tiana who presented the next award…Best Video with a Social Message…to KAMA for the video for their hit ‘Believe’. “I almost don’t want to say anything and we just all let that sink in.”

“It really was deeply moving. Probably we’ll see it up for this category next year.” Tiana agreed, and they read off the nominees. 

When they read the winner, Jamal Lyon was so happy, it would have been easy to think that he’d won the award. When they took the stage, Jamal hugged Mercedes joyously, spinning her in a circle. He grabbed the mic really quick to ‘apologize’ for his exuberance. “Sorry, y’all…but I love these guys.” Everyone chuckled good naturedly.

“We love you to, Mally-Mal.” Puck teased. He thanked everyone that was needed, including Warner, Alek Kershishian, Denise Lee, Valerie Willthorne, Pink, The Dixie Chicks, Sir Elton John…the whole lot.

Then Sam grabbed the mic to remind everyone that all love was beautiful. But it was Mercedes who got to speak at the end. “I want to thank our fans. Those who can and do buy our music, but also those who live in such financial straits that they can only listen to us on radio or via other free media. Thank you. I am glad that we bring you hope and we thank you all very much for the love that you give us…and not just KAMA, all of us who make our livings trying to bring you all happiness and joy. We hope that we continue to make music and movies and books that you all can find moments of delight in…but more than that we hope that we continue to make books and movies and music that you can find yourselves in. Thank you.”

The applause from the regular seats was deafening. There was a ground swell of hoots, hollars, and clapping from the entire room as her fellow musicians and famous people felt like she was including them in giving thanks. I met them backstage and helped them to find their way to the press room. Of course the questions weren’t just about the awards they won, a lot of them were about the video that debuted a short time before. Everyone wanted to know if KAMA was brave or stupid for being so very vocal on the issue. Sam finally shut them down with a striking answer. “When this country can go six months without either a video of a police officer shooting an unarmed Black person surfacing or a mass shooting happening then we’ll stop talking about police violence and gun control. Change never happens when people sit silent.” That sound bite was all over the news the next day. 

Over the course of the rest of the evening, KAMA was up for Video of the Year for ‘Rub You the Right Way’, but their video for ‘Believe’ was up for Best Direction and Best Art Direction. Both Alek Kershishian and Denise Lee took home Moonmen for their work on the stunning video. Everyone was sure that Taylor Swift was taking home the last award of the night. It was all over the buzz and she was the VMA darling. She had ten nominations. It was not an unusual expectation. Ice Cube and his son O'Shea Jackson, Jr. presented the nominees then Ice Cube’s smile got very, very big and he showed the envelope to his son and doppelganger who mirrored the look of fierce joy. “Video of the Year goes to KAMA for that sexy ass piece of video gold… ‘Rub You the Right Way’. Huh, yeah!”

There was an actual moment where all the industry people were in shock. But not the fans. They had made the video the most streamed and downloaded video of the year. They knew that they were singing the sexier song a hell of a lot more than they were the pop princess’s ode to not getting over the smallest slights. But soon the entire theater came to life with raucous applause. KAMA made their way back to the stage. Mercedes accepted hugs from both men and Sam and Puck both got bro hugs of their own. It was Cedes who took the mic first. “Daddy, Devon…Kevon…I just got hugged by Ice Cube.” She chortled before thanking people appropriately.

Sam dedicated the win to Michael Haussman. “I want to thank you for helping us show the world that it is okay to not be a size nothing…that you can still be loved and sexy and wanted and desired at a size fourteen or sixteen. That what matters is being healthy and being true to who you are and those you love.”

Puck went a slightly different route. “Yeah, that’s why Sammy Boy is our gentleman. “I want to dedicate this to all those haters who try and talk isht about Ms. Mercedes Jones because she’s not a hanger or whatever they seem to think all women should look like. There is beauty in every woman. There is something to be desired in every woman…every human being. If you can’t see that, the problem isn’t with them or their weight or their looks…it’s with you and your own lack of self-esteem and self-love. Thank you MTV and our fans for showing the world that tonight.”

There was a ton of post awards interviews and the like. I watched the crowd closely. There was a moment of abject terror for all of us when Corbin Richardson came over to congratulate KAMA and there was no way they could side step or avoid him. He shook Sam and Puck’s hands but bent down to kiss the back of Mercedes’ “Congratulations, Ms. Jones…I have to say, you are even more beautiful in person. Your video of the year…” The look he gave her made my skin crawl and Sam and Noah both start to ‘bow up’ as Stevie called it. “It was very inspiring.” He finally completed the thought. The way he said the word inspiring left no doubt in any one’s mind what he meant. “It was my second favorite of your videos.”

No one asked what his favorite video was. Thankfully, Daniel stepped forward. “Thanks man. We’ve gotta get going…there are fans out there who want to see their KAMA.” He said cordially though anyone who knew him could see the hate in his eyes.

With Tank looming over Daniel’s shoulder ready and willing to put Richardson into traction, the skeevy stalker moved on. Darcy, Ruth and I took control of getting KAMA moving more quickly through the celebrity gauntlet and back outside where many fans had congregated to cheer and get what autographs they could. As we made our way through that crowd, sticking close enough to be available if needed, but giving the trio room to sign and smile and take pictures with the fans, I overheard Lester as he made call into Rangeman to let Ranger know what had happened. “He’s escalating. Have Manny let the Feds know.”

It was a crappy ending to the triumphant evening. However, like the champs they were, Cedes, Sam and Puck shook it off and took their entire Team and Crew out to dinner at Rock’n Fish. That dinner really enlivened their spirits. By the time everyone changed and we headed to Supperclub for Diddy’s #FINNAGETLOOSE after party, the trio was all smiles and joy and victory once again. Probably, considering that we had to get back on the road before noon the next day, KAMA should have had us go to maybe the Jeremy Scott and Adidas Originals party or even the Republic Records soiree. Diddy parties were not small or quiet events. They were parties in the truest sense of the word. We didn’t get back to our hotel rooms until almost nine that Monday morning. There was just enough time for everyone to shower and change, repack our clothes and check out before we needed to say goodbye to the Harris family, Ruth, Kurt, Blaine, Haja and Brantley and get underway to our next tour stop.

I was exhausted. I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I was a little tired of playing dress up every time I turned around. But I was also happier than I could ever remember being and I was loving every single moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment Please.   
> The world is mean show a writer some kindness.   
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	16. Good Life (One Republic) & Growing Pains (Ludacris)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel & Devon tell us about their summers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her beta reading awesomeness.
> 
> Guest Stars  
> Cree Summers as Chareesma McGraw  
> Michael Spears as Dancing Wolf McGraw

Chapter 15

Good Life (One Republic)  
Daniel PoV

It was intriguing how a surprise move that started out as just a way for me to help my younger cousin and had the benefit of allowing me to be closer to my family had blossomed into the opportunity of a lifetime. Not just for me, but for Riker and our best friends-slash-chosen family members. Riker and I were in an incredible place in our relationship. We hadn’t spent more than a week apart in the entire time since we’d officially moved to the east coast. Which was almost a novelty. She and Chris had been amazing undercover cops. They’d had the highest solve rate in their department in Seattle. But those types of cases usually were not over and done with quickly and they had to fully immerse themselves in the worlds of their covers. We’d been pretty lucky though, the longest we’d gone without her captain making a way for us to see each other was two months. It had been hard but we’d made it work. Even though we had made the long absences work, it was nice to come home to each other most nights.

We were also able to be closer with both of our families. Riker’s parents had met and become friends when they were in middle school in rural Alabama, but neither of them had found themselves able to stay stuck on the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians federally allowed lands. Her mother Chareesma was half Chickasaw and half black and her father, Dancing Wolf was full blooded Choctaw. They were both born and raised in the southern state and hated it. They’d had Riker when they were in their teens but managed to not only graduate high school on time but to go on to college. After they had finished college, they’d worked as teachers in different countries around the world as Riker was growing up. That was a large part of the reason that my beautiful fiancée spoke fluent Spanish, French, Mandarin, Portuguese, Korean and Vietnamese…in addition to Chickasaw, Choctaw and English, of course. From the time they had gone international to before she returned to America for college, Riker figured that she spent a total, if she added all the short visits to her extended family together, of one year in the country of her birth. I’d met her parents only once, when they, and all of her grandparents, had attended her college graduation.

With Riker on a more stable schedule, that summer, her parents were finally able to come for what they felt was a long overdue visit. They flew in from Spain where they were teaching English as a second language and American Cultural History at a posh private secondary school. We picked them up at Liberty International in Newark the second Saturday in June. It was of little surprise that we saw her father first. Dancing Wolf McGraw was a six foot two inch tall, man with a swimmer or runner’s build and the same thick, dark…dark brown hair Riker had, though his was significantly longer and much, much straighter. It reached the small of his back easily. The first time I met him, I remember thinking that if Antonio Banderas had had hair like that, he wouldn’t have needed that horrible weave to play Armand. On first appearance, Dancing Wolf was a taciturn and reserved man. But once you got to know him, you realized that he loved to joke and kid around. In fact, he had a mental collection of dad jokes that included horrific puns and one liners from every corner of the world. That afternoon, coming out of the security checkpoint, no one would ever know that Riker likened receiving a smile from her father to seeing the Aurora Borealis. “It’s always there lurking around, but actually being there and seeing it is rare and special.”

It was certainly there as he beheld his only child face to face for the first time in far too long. They emailed, spoke and Skyped often, but there was nothing that could replace seeing that the person you loved more than life itself was whole, healthy and strong with your own eyes. The joy of their reunion was visible in every feature of his face. By his side, his wife…spiritually long before they’d actually made it legal…was smiling brightly. Chareesma was almost a full foot shorter than Dancing Wolf but her energetic legs more than kept up with his longer ones. Her hair clearly showed that there was Black blood in her genetic make-up. It was actually a little lighter than her husband and daughter’s, and it was a thick mass of kinky-corkscrew curls that were difficult…almost impossible to tame. She’d done so for Riker’s graduation, but it didn’t seem as if she’d bothered for the international flight. While Dancing Wolf wore a rather traditional blue button down shirt, simple pair of well-loved jeans and a pair of All-Stars that had seen more miles than most, Chareesma’s clothing was neither traditional nor simple. Her jeans were vintage, probably actually from the sixties vintage, bell bottoms with red and yellow flowers embroidered around the hems. A shirt that she’d clearly stolen from her husband was open to reveal an orange and red floral halter crop-top and a still flat belly. Her trim curves and unlined face helped people to confuse her relationship with Riker as being siblings rather than mother and daughter.

Seeing her parents closing the distance between them, Riker couldn’t help herself. And really who could blame her. It had been a hell of a long time since she’d graduated college and been in their actual, physical presence. She sprinted forward meeting her irrepressible mother halfway. Both Dancing Wolf and I followed our women at a more sedate pace. Mine a bit more sedate than his. I liked Chareesma and Dancing Wolf. I really did…but trying to follow their initial, emotional reunion conversation with Riker gave me a headache. Compared to Chris, Dom, Grant and Riker I basically knew slightly better than college level Spanish. The way the McGraws flowed through languages, sometimes using two or three in the same sentence, was just too much for my poor brain to keep up with. Finally their greetings and assurances of each other’s’ continued well-being were complete.

“Sorry Daniel,” Chareesma said with an apologetic grin as she drew me into a hug. “We’re being rude.”

I just chuckled. “No, you’re happy to see each other. Besides, it serves me right for not paying more attention in my foreign language classes.”

Dancing Wolf shook my hand. “You keep up pretty well when we remember to stick to Spanish.” He soothed. “Let’s get on out of here. Since 9/11, speaking too many languages while looking ‘other’ in an American airport is pretty ill advised.”

He spoke nothing but the truth. One would like to think that people could see Riker in her khaki shorts, hunter green tank top and Sketcher’s flip flops and Chareesma in her croptop and Birkenstocks and realized that they were showing way too much skin to have been uber religious Islamic zealots. But fear made people even stupider than group think tended to do, so we made like bananas and split. Dancing Wolf’s damn dad humor was infectious. The McGraws tended to travel light. They had their carry ons, Chareema’s purse…one of those magical carpet bag purses that could hold the secrets of the ages…and an old Army duffle bag that had belonged to Chareesma’s grandfather. He had been a code talker in World War II. According to what Riker knew of her family history, it had been quite the scandal when he returned from the war with an Italian bride. Her mother had kept that tradition when she had married and borne the children of a black man. That was how the tribe saw it, though in reality Chareesma’s father had himself probably only been half Black. He just didn’t know exactly what his mother had been beyond being Native American. She’d died in childbirth and regionally she was assumed to have been Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw or Seminole. That had worked out in his favor somewhat. Rather than putting him into the Alabama foster care system, he’d been turned over to the Chickasaw tribe and raised as one of their own.

Anyway, we gathered their things and headed to our apartment building. When we moved into our place, we’d happily moved ourselves and our things into the master suite. We’d then decided to decorate the smallest of the three bedrooms as an office-slash-study. But we’d turned the third bed into our guest room. After several trips to furniture stores on the Jersey side of the tunnel, Riker had picked out the furniture from a store called Raymour and Flannigan’s. The queen size bedroom set was called Jovie and was beautifully intricate and yet stunningly simple. With its woven wood design, the furniture looked like something one would find in the orient or perhaps India. And Dominique had taken a single look at it and declared, “I’m decorating the ever-loving fuck out of your guest room for my blog.” And she did. Within a few weeks, the bed we’d purchased was covered with a truly gorgeous duvet set. The deep burgundy was highlighted with light ivory, peach, reds, teals and browns. So, Dominique used those colors elsewhere in the room. The ceiling was painted a pale ivory. The walls a soft peach. The browns picked up by the walnut furniture and hard wood floors. There were pops of teal in the art on the walls and in the pillows and the sheets. The colors were all mirrored in the large area rug that covered most of the floor. Indian looking jars held fragrant oils on the dresser and nightstands. Oriental baskets awaited visitors’ trinkets near them.

Chareesma and that room seemed to be made for each other. She loved it. Dancing Wolf laughed at her squeals of delight. “Nice.” He said simply.

I left the three of them to have some time for themselves while I went and procured the ultimate ‘Welcome to New York’ feast…Chinese food and New York Style pizza. I wasn’t surprised to find that Dom and Chris were in our living room with Rike and her parents when I got back with the food. Chareesma and Dancign Wolf were laughing and sharing embarrassing stories of Riker’s childhood in Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos and South Korea. Chris and Dom returning the favor by telling stories of undercover cases, including the one where Chris and Riker had to pretend to be partners, rather than partners. That one had been pretty emotionally scaring for Riker. While Rike didn’t have a problem with lesbianism and had played one on a different case, kissing her ‘sister’ had bothered the hell out of her.

As we set up our feast, I asked why they hadn’t invited Grant to join us. Chris’ laughter was quick and a little smug. “I can’t believe that we know, and you don’t.”

“What? What don’t I know?” I asked her.

Dominque’s chuckles joined her wife’s. “You see him every single day…and we know where he is tonight, and you have no clue at all.”

“Will someone just tell me where Grant is?” I finally groaned.

My beloved Riker took pity on me. “Grant has a date tonight.”

I blinked a couple of times. “Grant…our Grant…Dom’s brother Grant? Has a date? With who?”

“Remember that gamer group Ruth told him about…the one her second assistant is a part of?” I nodded in response to Dominique’s question. “Well, there were a couple of girl gamers in the group. One said girl gamer happens to be that intern turned junior assistant to one of KAMA’s Warner reps.”

“Wait…Gina’s a gamer?” I got hung up on that little tidbit.

“Apparently, she is deeply into the Elder Scrolls world and has been for years.” Chris said happily.

I thought about it for a minute. “She’s going to eat him alive. I’ve met her a few times. She’s got no filters and is very much bold.” Then I thought for another minute…the twenty-something younv woman was a weird blend of Puck and Darcy, with apparently some Sam or Ain’t Got No Mercy thrown in to keep things interesting. She had a loyalty about her that tempered her sharp edges. “Actually, now that I think about it, she might be just what he needs.”

The rest of the night we talked and laughed and joked. Unfortunately, the next morning I had to go into the office. A real estate mogul turned reality TV personality had bit the big one and given how many times he’d tweeted negative or derogatory things about KAMA, of course, everyone wanted to know if we had a statement. I crafted a statement that was basically reiterated by Mercedes when the papz stuck mics in their face down in Charlotte. Of course, then Sam opened his mouth. I mean, don’t get me wrong…Puck’s was, well, what you expect of Puck, irreverent and truthful, if a little mean. No one expected Sam ‘Southern Sweetheart’ Evans to let loose with such a strong condemnation of anyone, let alone someone he’d never even met. I was so very grateful to everyone and everything that had conspired to make sure that Darcy was there with her phone to record his statement. With her video we were able to cut any misquoters off at the pass. Though given Sam’s impromptu statement the actual quotes were by and large better than anything the right-wing media could have come up with to claim he had said about the death of the only ‘successful’ businessman to have gone bankrupt more often than not.

With all that happened that Sunday, of course I had to go in on Monday to smooth any ruffled feathers and sooth any savage beasts. Sunday hadn’t been such a major thing, since Riker and Chris were both off duty that day and really Dancing Wolf and Chareesma were there to visit Riker not me anyway. Riker and our friends took her parents around the city to see some of NYC’s most iconic sights. I was able to meet them for lunch at the world famous Tom’s Restaurant…even if most of the world thought that its name was Monk’s Diner. Then Riker and I took them for dinner in Chinatown at Jing Fong’s. But Monday Detectives McGraw and Sanchez were back at work and so was I, which left Chareesma and Dancing Wolf to the tender mercies of Dominique Villareal-Sanchez.

Dominique is one of my favorite people in the world and as close to me as my little sister Melliscent. But…Dom was a shopper. She wasn’t just a hobby shopper either. She had managed to create a very lucrative career out of shopping for beauty and fashion finds. A career that had only grown since she’d moved to America’s Fashion Mecca. She was smart and savvy and she had a serious addiction that she’d made work for her. That may have been why she could never understand that others didn’t share her affliction. Perhaps it was my own fault. I never thought that leaving Rike’s parents with just Dom for entertainment would go the way it did. She took Chareesma and Dancing Wolf McGraw, neo-hippies and world citizens, shopping. Macys, Neiman, Barney’s, Saks…they hit them all. When I got home the living room was cluttered with the iconic stores’ highly recognizable bags. Dancing Wolf was sprawled out in an arm chair looking more than a little shell shocked and sipping on a cup from Intelligentsia Coffee, Dominique’s favorite post shopping coffee haunt.

Before he could say anything, I immediately went into apology mode. “I am so sorry. She was supposed to take you guys to do something YOU wanted to do.”

“Daniel, it’s fine.” Chareesma assured me laughingly. “It was my suggestion to go shopping. Dancing Wolf and I may not pay much attention to fashion and such, but we are teachers and needed to replace some of our professional wardrobe. I’ve been one of Dominique’s subscribers for a very long time. So, who better to help us replace and update than our daughter’s very good friend, who just happens to be a popular fashion blogger?”

Dancing Wolf sighed. “I knew that we were going to have to bite the bullet and engage in some capitalistic endeavors, I just never thought that we’d do all the shopping Eesma wanted to do in one day. We’re here for weeks.” He groused. “Did you at least have a better day than I did?”

I shrugged. “Well, I’ve wrapped up the little bit of mishegas the Trump death caused. I swear, the media wanted statements from every single one of my clients. KAMA was just the biggest and the first. So tomorrow I’ll be available to take you around. Which would you rather do, the Statue of Liberty or MoMA?”

“Ooohh…I want to do both.” Chareesma laughed. “While I think about which one I want to do first, why don’t you go and get out of that suit. Then you can tell us all about your day. I still cannot believe that that cute little girl we met when Riker graduated college is a world-famous rock star. I love her voice. And all the little girls at our school just love them some KAMA.” She shooed me towards the master bedroom. “Go on now, dinner should be ready about the time Riker gets home.”

I do not know how I missed the amazing smells coming out of our kitchen. Probably because it was a strange and unusual occurrence. Riker was a decent cook who just didn’t like cooking. I was an okay cook who had never taken the time to learn to do more than get by in the kitchen. I was great at grilling meats on a Foreman and I was a sandwich and salad making king. Mellie always absolutely loved my spaghetti and macaroni and cheese…but I didn’t have much skills beyond those few things, burgers and steaks. I was kind of surprised that we had enough kitchen stuff for Chareesma to even make food that smelled that good. When I said as much she just laughed. “Oh, just consider the new pots and things a house warming gift from me.”

“Yeah, and carrying them all back here was my gift.” Dancing Wolf teased.

“Thank you, I’m sure that they will see a ton of usage these next few weeks and then await your next visit…because neither me nor Riker will know what to do with half of them.” I said with honesty and gratitude.

When Riker got home, she said pretty much the same thing. We had an amazing dinner of homemade chicken marsala, Indian saag and naan. It was funny how Chareesma saw no problem having an Italian entrée with an Indian side. The international meal was all amazingly delicious. Dinner was great as was the company. The next day, I took Chareesma and Dancing Wolf to the Museum of Modern Art. Dancing Wolf was in heaven. Chareesma and I got bored after a couple of hours. Thankfully, they had a film series exhibition on the works of Ginger Rogers. That saved both our lives. Chareesma loved the movie and I enjoyed the nap. After six hours, we finally left the museum and headed back to the apartment. During the movie, Chareesma had stolen my phone and invited Dad, Nadia and Melliscent if she could, to join us for dinner…along with Dom, Chris and Grant. We made it home by five and somehow Chareesma still managed to churn out an amazing international feast that included paella, stuffed eggplants with tofu, Korean seasoned spinach, arroz de bacalhau and fried green beans by seven when the Riker got home, and the other members of our family arrived.

Of course, my dad and Nadia were their usual flirtatious selves. I knew why. Chareesma and Dancing Wolf were both very attractive. Melliscent developed an almost immediate crush on Riker’s, admittedly handsome, father. Grant had long ago dealt with my baby sister’s love of attractive men. He’d simply told her how boring he was. That had definitely done the trick. My little sister envisioned living a life of adventure and intrigue. She hoped to be an ambassador and travel the world…or failing that, an actress who would do the same. Mellie had given some thought to becoming a fashion or jewelry designer…but, like Dad, she couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler. Still, she and Dominique always had a great time conversing and that evening was no different.

We were about halfway through with dinner, when Chareesma got our attention, drawing us out of our smaller conversations. “I want to thank all of my daughter’s and her Hattak’s friends and family for joining us tonight on such short notice. I’m sure that you’re wondering why I called everyone together.”

Dad just smirked. “I assumed that you wanted to meet the family or the man who is engaged to your daughter.”

She laughed merrily, “well, there is that. But I’m also hoping that between the eight of us, we can convince the happy couple to have an actual wedding rather than just going to the court house.”

Nadia laughed. “We might need to sit this one out then. It would be very hypocritical of us to lecture them when we’re planning to hit Vegas sometime next month and just pop back up married.”

Melliscent looked livid. “Oh no you’re not. You and Daddy can get married in Vegas, I know you said that you’ve always wanted to. But me and Daniel and Riker…we’re going to be there and so will Mills and your other sisters from other misters or they would never forgive you.”

I laughed. “Oh, you know it’s true.” I said when Nadia turned big green eyes on me. “Ethan said just Monday that when he talked to Mills, she was talking about how much she was looking forward to Francesca’s wedding and was sure that yours would follow soon thereafter.”

“Yeah, well, we’re here to make sure that you make your mother-in-law happy by having a real wedding when you marry her daughter.” Dad shot back.

I shrugged. “We’ll have whatever kind of wedding Riker wants to have.” I stated without equivocation. It was exactly what I felt in that moment. “I just want to be her husband.”

Riker was looking thoughtful. “I could do a real wedding…but it would have to be small. I would never be able to handle the kind of spectacle that Daniel’s cousin, Hannah, put on.”

I looked over. “So, what kind of wedding would you be thinking about?”

She looked thoughtful again. “You and me, Chris as my honor person…maybe Dom as my other bride’s maid if you had two people.”

“Grant and Mellie.” I said quickly. “I could do those two…if we went any bigger, I could pull in Dev or Kev.”

“I did like all her blue…maybe navy though…navy and black.” Riker said quietly. “Maybe a night wedding…one where we’re exchanging the kiss at midnight.”

“Well…maybe not that late. A midnight reception wouldn’t be too bad.”

“Oh, that could be beautiful.” Chareesma breathed. “With silver accents.”

Riker and Dom both shook their head. “Gold…gold accents. I prefer gold to silver.”

“It won’t be small. Even if we keep it to just family…we’re still talking a hell of a lot of people.” I felt the need to point out. “I mean, just the uncles and their significant others and kids, Aunt Dani and her crew, and the great uncles…plus my mother’s side of the family. I’m looking at around fifty or sixty people just for me.”

Dancing Wolf nodded. “Riker your side isn’t going to be any less. Is six months really going to be enough time?”

“We’ll do e-vites and try and keep things low-key.” Riker said reasonably. “I’d want one place for everything.”

“You mean one room for the ceremony and the reception?” Dancing Wolf asked her.

She shook her head. “Not necessarily. I think I’d want to have things set up so that the ceremony in one room of the building and then the reception in a different room. So, people didn’t have to leave and come back or whatever people have to do while they change the room around. Yeah, I’d want it to be all in the same building. Just to make sure that people don’t have to drive from one place to another.” Then Riker had a thought. “Will you guys be able to get back here so soon?”

Riker’s parent had been together since they were thirteen years old. It wasn’t surprising that they were able to have a whole conversation without saying a single word. “I guess, we can tell you and hopefully not jinx things. Part of the reason we came for a visit as soon as the school ended in Barcelona, we have an interview at the UN International School. To teach languages and culture classes.” Chareesma told us all.

That was a surprising tidbit of information. My in-laws to be hadn’t lived in the United States since Riker was six. She said as much and her parents smiled. Dancing Wolf responded. “You’re more settled. You’re engaged…getting married. Eventually there will be grandbabies. Plus, you’re living in a city with communities that have the cultures we really love and can’t live without. Now’s a good time to move closer.”

Thankfully, Dancing Wolf and Chareesma’s news put wedding planning on the back burner. The next day, I had to go into the office for an even bigger surprise. So, Dominique took Chareesma to meet Ricky for a hair and makeup consultation. Dancing Wolf went with them after hearing all about Ricky’s uniqueness. He got talked into a hot oil treatment and a trim, both of which were probably only an excuse for Ricky to get his hands on all that hair. Ricky had to be in sheer heaven that day, because Chareesma’s overabundance of curls had seen her consultation turned into a series of treatments too. Cedes’ hairdresser friend was very interesting. According to Dominique, he and Chareesma hit it off like a house on fire. She left there with curls that were just amazingly gorgeous. I had to admit, at forty-four, Chareesma McGraw was a beautiful woman. Granted not only was she going to be my mother-in-law, she also looked a lot like my relatives so that thought was very much just an appreciation of aesthetics and how well she had aged. I was more than a little surprised how under all her hippy fashion and huge hair, she actually reminded me a bit of my Aunt Arielle…if Arielle smiled a lot more.

But that was a ridiculously mild bit of surprise compared to the actual shock I had experienced that day when I went into the office. I’d received an email from Darcy that was confirmed by Haja in the staff meeting he called before we were scheduled to have our larger meeting with KAMA and the team members who were on the road with them. “Incredible news Chaps…KAMA has been invited to perform at the White House this October.” He said with a huge grin. “They have, of course, accepted the honor. Ethan and I have handled all the contracts and such and everything is set to go.” He yielded the floor to Ethan.

“As Haja said we’d got all the paperwork done. I’ve submitted all the necessary information to allow them to do the background checks for Benzie, Seuss and Flood. Thankfully, Flood’s record was a juvie charge only, not violent and honestly if the story ever does get out, at least he had good intentions.” Uncle Ethan chuckled.

“I should be able to spin it pretty, no problem. It’s kind of stupid sweet when your think about it.” I laughed as well. That meeting flowed into the larger, more electronic Team KAMA meeting and we gave our reports from there.

June of twenty fifteen was a month of surprises, and all of them were good to great. Riker’s parents had great interviews, three of them each. Thanks to Dominique and my aunt Amanda, whom Dom introduced them to over the course of their visit, they each had more than enough suits and new clothes to avoid repeating their looks. I wasn’t sure how much that counted, but they did get the jobs. They would both be teaching high level English as a second language and Chickasaw and Choctaw as electives. They were very happy and given their years of experience and how many languages they were fluent in, they were really well compensated. Of course, with their new job, we had to put them in contact with Mills and Francesca. Francesca found them a great two-bedroom townhouse for rent in Brooklyn. They would have a commute, but neither of them were really all that into living in one of the high rises in walking distance to the school.

The same night Dancing Wolf and Chareesma brought their wonderful news to the dinner table, Riker and Chris had some incredible news of their own. “We’ve finally been scheduled for the phase II interview panel. That’s on July seventh. If all goes well we’ll move onto the polygraph exam, drug test, fingerprinting, and medical exam portion of our FBI application process. We both have to be in Virginia July thirteenth through the eighteenth.” Riker told us all with a happy smile on her face.

“If all goes well, we’ll have to take a leave of absence…but our Chief said she would clear things for us.” Chris explained. “We’d have to spend twelve weeks at FLETC down in Georgia and that would be followed by five months at Quantico. There could be some down time in between. In which case the Chief said that we could work through the wait as our official notice.”

Things turned into a serious celebration then. There was wine and we ordered cookie delivery…it was a whole big thing. The week and a half before Riker and Chris had to go to DC flew by. We each helped out in our own special way. Chareesma and Dancing Wolf led them through meditations and yoga on the daily after work. Exercises to clear their chakra and encourage positivity and good karma. Dominique made sure that, in addition to the suits they’d gotten before their NPD interviews, they had new, pretty and yet completely within the FBI guidelines suits to wear for every single day as well as fashionably functional exercise gear for their physicals and matching luggage. Grant made sure that all the travel and hotel arrangements were made and that they had everything they needed on that end. I helped them with their interview prep. A big art of PR was psychological…it was my privilege to help them get their minds right. While they were in DC, Chareesma and Dancing Wolf returned to Spain to wrap up their life there. They were selling everything and buying fresh when they got back to New York, but that tended to be their practice when changing countries anyway so they were well used to doing it.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t be there to see them off. With the attack on a fan at a concert, I had to fly out to Texas to get ahead of any ill will that could have manifested. Fortunately, none did…in fact both KAMA and Rangeman came out smelling like roses. They experienced a spike in interest for their bodyguard and security services and we had a nice little bump in online record and merch sales. I was glad to be able to return to Weehawken quickly. But Riker and Chris had already left for DC. I spent most of the time they were gone stuck in my office handling a crisis for Cat Valentine. It wasn’t a major event. She licked some donuts that were out on a counter in a donut shop…and made some dumbass remarks. She’d signed with me just three months earlier, having gotten my name from her old high school classmate’s sister. KAMA’s favored makeup artist, Trina, and her sister Tori had attended a performing arts high school in LA all together. It took some time, and thankfully more victims of Josh Duggar came forward a couple of weeks later so I was able to move Cat out of the media’s mouths. Thankfully. I loved that I had other clients and I was pretty sure that Cat’s inability to see harm in what she does, and her constant assumptions that no one else would either, had paid for whatever kind of wedding Riker wanted.

Though we found out when she got back from DC that we would either have to postpone the honeymoon or we had plenty of time to plan the event. Both of them made it through the interviews and the exams with flying colors. They were told to report to FLETC the Monday following Labor Day. Their three months would be up a couple of weeks before Christmas and they were scheduled to join the January class of the Basic Field Training Course, which would last through the following July. I was so proud of her that we didn’t make it out of our bed for the entire weekend after they got home. Then she wanted to tell Aunt Dani in person, and KAMA happened to be in Ohio for a few days, so we flew out and had a blast playing with Amara, Amaea, Sloane and the rest of the kiddles…that was more relaxing than the Harris Family reunion we’d attended the week before that. Though without Aunt Arielle there, things were nowhere near as tense.

My career was going every bit as well. My work with Cat Valentine brought me to the attention of Andre Harris, another of her classmates. He was in the final stages of putting out his second album on Columbia Records. His work was critically acclaimed, but he couldn’t seem to get himself out of the critics’ hearts and into the people’s. That was where I…and Darcy with me…came in. It took the three of us less than two weeks to work up a plan that would gain him notice and get him air play. Andre brought in his good friend, and another Hollywood Arts alum, Beck Oliver. He was a few rungs up the Broadway ladder working in Lion King and wanting to make his way from the supporting cast to the main cast as he and his wife were discussing her leaving her job at Columbia to pursue her dream of directing independent films. I was working on getting Jade West-Oliver on my roster too. From what I’d heard from her classmates, that woman was capable of revolutionizing the horror movie genre. Plus, unlike her husband and friends, she’d need a management team too. Landing her could benefit me, Darcy, Ethan and Haja.

All of that was happening just in time to send me to LA riding high. I wasn’t a publicist…it was a very important distinction in my mind. But I never minded lending my wide array of knowledge to my cousin and her crew. The biggest award shows were all hands on deck events mainly because one of the indicators…silly though it may have been…as to who was the biggest stars was how many people were rolling in their entourage. With KAMA up for four awards and their video for ‘Believe’ up for two more, we had to step correct and show the world what they would expect to see from a group at KAMA’s level. We were also rolling pretty deep because we were in The Bastard’s neck of the woods. He was consistently invited to all of the major awards shows because of the intersection between fashion and music and the fact that he had money in more than a few music enterprises.

We were all floating on a sea of pride and accomplishment. Maybe that was why we were blindsided by The Bastard walking over bold as he pleased. It never dawned on me that he would have the unmitigated gall to approach her like that. Oh, he couched it as him congratulating all three of them, but he hovered over Mercedes in a way that made me want to punch him in his throat. Mercedes Antoinette Jones was my family. I would never allow That cocky muthafuckin’ Bastard to hurt her. It must have been pretty apparent that I was feeling some kind of way about his presence near my cousin, because Tank moved up behind. The huge and solid presence brought me out of my caveman…must protect…mentality. Which let me think of how to best actually get him away from us. So, I played publicist and rushed him along.

Thankfully, the rest of the night went much more smoothly. I was able to get some face time in with my LA clients. I was amassing quite a few. Cat Valentine and Cooper Anderson were both LA based and Andre Harris was bi-coastal. Best of all Anderson introduced Haja and I to quite a few of his friends who were still struggling to break big. We were sure that between the two of us, we’d certainly be able to help them cultivate better opportunities and advance their careers. The extra clients were awesome and they were certainly going to give me something to focus on while Riker and Chris were gone. Dom threw herself into planning my and Riker’s wedding to fill her time. So, she had all of that and I managed to get her front row at more than a few of the events during New York Fashion Week, she would be attending those with Mercedes and Ruth Mayzer. The coming months were going to be ridiculously busy…I couldn’t wait.

 

Growing Pains (Ludacris)  
Devon PoV

Adulting was hard. It was seriously harder than my parents had made it look. And way harder than I ever thought it was going to be and Tonya and I were really blessed in having it a lot easier than a lot of people. We had each other, and we had Kevon and Patrice. We both had great jobs. We had amazing starter homes that all we’d had to do was decorate and get home owner’s insurance for. We had always seemed to make friends easily. But time and circumstances had forced us to become rather insular. The specific circumstance were different for each of us. Tonya was the youngest person in her department. She tended to identify more with the students than the tenured professors and wanted to keep things fun and interesting. She hoped to draw more people into studying languages for the love of them. The department head had hired her for exactly that reason, her drive and passion in creating a love of languages in others. Her co-workers seemed to think that they were some sort of elite cadre of linguistical paladins whom decided who was worthy of knowledge and what knowledge was worthy to be taught. All of that basically came together to mean that my beautiful bride hadn’t really gelled with her co-workers. She’d begun making friends with a few of the older Teacher Assistants and such, but their lives were usually even busier than hers.

Patrice was having her own trouble making friends at her job. She was one of the few female engineers in her firm. She was also the only female and the youngest person there who had all the credentials to become a project manager sooner rather than later. In fact, she was hired specifically to become a project manager as soon as possible. In the Metro Atlanta area, the best way to get the most lucrative contracts was to have a person of color running things. It wasn’t always determinative, but it was known to help. She made a fair few office buddies, but the simple truth was that engineers, even those of the civil variety tended to be less, um, less into sports and cheerleading and chick-flicks, the kinds of things that Patrice liked, and more into the sci-fi, fantasy, comic book kind of things that Tonya and I were into. So, the times she and Kevon had gotten together with them outside of the office…well, Kev had said that he’d spent the whole time thinking that those guys would have loved me.

So, a few weeks later when Tricie’s company was having a thing that she could invite us all to, we went with them and yeah, Tonya and I quickly realized that they were all our kind of people. At least I thought they all were at first. We’d been hanging out with them on weekends for a couple of months, they had a pretty boss D&D game going that we got into, when I overheard a private call that I shouldn’t have listened to. I found out that one of the guys we’d gotten so close to…a guy I’d personally thought of as someone I could aspire to be like when I was his age, a guy who brought his son with him to the weekly D&D campaigns…was using us as his alibi when he was cheating on his wife of nineteen years. Tonya and I were new and his wife hadn’t met us yet, so he was fabricating activities with us to hide what he was really doing. If I grew colder to him after I realized that he wasn’t worth shit, no one else seemed to notice. But I knew I did and of course Tonya noticed pretty immediately. 

As soon as I told her the deal. She totally iced him out. That guy had to be some kind of stupid though. Because he brought his family to a work event he knew we were going to with Patrice and Kevon. Not only did my beautiful and smart wife completely bust the dude, not publically, but with his wife, she also put the wife, who’s suspected and wanted out but couldn’t afford an attorney to get a divorce, in touch with one of Aunt Amanda’s sorors, who was a divorce attorney in Atlanta and took the case pro bono. I’d lost a probable friend. But I comforted myself with the knowledge that I didn’t want to be friends with anyone who would treat someone like that anyway. The thing that worried me was the kids; his son that came to play D&D, his daughter who played the Sims like a champ; I was worried about what me and Tonya’s interference had done to their lives. However, even that question was answered after a few months when Ben and BJ came back to the D&D game.

BJ was working on his character with the other teenage kid of our host, when Ben came over where I was talking with some of the other guys. “Why did you guys have to do it? We were fine.”

I gave him a serious side eye. “Keri told Tonya that every time you claimed to be working late, she hoped and almost prayed that you’d die in a fiery car wreck. You call that fine?”

“We were all together every night. I didn’t have to only see my kids on the weekends. We were happy. You destroyed my family.” Ben said stubbornly.

I rolled my eyes. “You destroyed your family. You turned the love of a woman who loved you into one who probably hates the hell out of you. Grown ass men, real men, don’t feel the need to hurt a woman they claim to love. You have a son…is that the kind of quote-unquote ‘man’ you want him to be? Is that how you’d want some quote-unquote ‘man’ to treat your daughter?”

He just scoffed. “What would you know? You’ve only been married a hot minute. You don’t know what it’s like to have to sleep with the same woman night after night when there are so many other women, beautiful women, out there. Men just aren’t wired for long term monogamy.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s just plan bullshit. My parents have been together for over thirty years. My father has never even thought about cheating on her. My grandparents…both sets were together until death took one of them. Neither of my grandfathers ever cheated on their wives. Monogamy isn’t an inherent personality trait, it is a choice you make before you ever take your vows. I don’t worry about ‘beautiful women’ because there is no woman more beautiful to me than my wife. If you didn’t feel the same, you should have left her alone and either found the woman who did make you feel that way, or a woman who wasn’t looking for a commitment.”

One of the other guys who been in the crew a lot longer than me seemed to cosign my statements. “Besides, we all really like Keri. We hated the fact that you were always using our names to hurt her. We just weren’t brave enough to say anything.”

I think that news kind of broke him. He left our little assemblage and crossed to another area and group. I was kind of surprised when BJ pulled me to the side before they left that day. “Mr. Jones…I just…me and my sister…we’re grateful. We didn’t know what was going on. Mom made sure of that. But we could see her getting sadder and sadder every day even as she tried to pretend that nothing was wrong. Everything felt different. Mari thinks that Mom was staying to make us happy…she always puts us first. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you. Mom’s getting happy again. She’s smiling with her whole face again. So yeah, thanks.” Knowing that my knee jerk response had helped more than it hurt…that helped me to feel settled that I’d done the right thing. BJ was a great kid and he could campaign like nobody’s business. I would have absolutely hated to find out that his father had been right, and I’d destroyed everyone in that family by forcing that skeleton from the closet.

Still, my friendship drama was surprisingly less dramatic than Kevon’s. At least I didn’t almost get arrested. Yup, Kevon made his new friends at the gym. He went every day. I went three or four times a week and that was enough for me. Then again, I didn’t have a shit ton of time to kill as I waited for my wife to commute home every evening, so maybe that was the difference. Anyway. Kev had gotten to be really friendly with a guy named Rod. They were roughly the same age, they both like working out like idiots…my term not theirs…they both had significant others who were commuting quite a distance every day. I got the friendship. It made sense to me. Rod wasn’t really my cup of tea, but he and Kev got along like a house on fire…at first. Then Mercedes and her guys and crew came to Atlanta for their concert stop.

Apparently, though Kev had told old dude that he had a little sister named Mercedes who went to Columbia and basically a hell of a lot about our family, Rod never realized that our Mercedes Jones was The Mercedes Jones. Come to find out, Rod’s girl was a huge fan. He’d tried, unsuccessfully, to get tickets to the KAMA concert when they first hit. He’d even tried getting tickets through scalper sites. No dice. As the concert approached, he was seriously frantic. He was trying to win the radio contests and everything he could think of. The idiot had lied to his girl about getting the ticket all the way back in February. He didn’t feel like he could admit that he hadn’t been able to get them. Of course, he ultimately didn’t get them. There were no tickets to be gotten after the original offering. Darcy had made sure that no one would able to create fraudulent tickets and the sales sites had made sure that the scalpers wouldn’t be able to get more than a few sets of KAMA’s tickets. Rod’s girl got mad, not because he couldn’t get the tickets, but because he lied to her face about it and kept lying about it.

When he found out that Kevon and Patrice had not only gone to the concert, but as Mercedes’ siblings, we were held as VIPs and partied with KAMA after the concert, Rod…in his massive wisdom…decided that his girl being mad at him was all Kevon’s fault. The Friday after the concert, when MeDe and all her peeps were in South Carolina, Rod goes up to Kev in the gym and he starts pushing and shoving him around yelling and fussing about that bullshit. “Your ass could have gotten me tickets for my girl. You never told me that you’re related to that whore in KAMA.”

No one could fault my brother for what happened next. Not a single, solitary soul. Kev punched that asshole dead in his face. He didn’t fully go after the guy. Just one good punch and down went the jerk. “Look, you can say what you want about me…but you call my little sister out her name ever again and your dentist is gonna be picking your teeth out of your shit to try and put them back in your fucking gums.”

“Fuck you, man.” Rod said from the floor.

“Naw, braw, you ain’t my type.” Kevon told him and just walked away. Kevon Jones was the kind of person that once somebody crossed his line, he was just done with them. He didn’t leave the gym, he was still there when the police arrived a few minutes later, having been called by the lady behind the check in desk.

After taking the statements of Rod and the witnesses, they went over and talked to Kevon. “Look, we get it. He called your younger sister a name that was undeserved. But you can’t punch every guy who says something stupid in the face. Maybe back in the day, your father might have been able to get away with it. Certainly, cops in your grandfather’s day would have had that discretion. But we don’t. If that guy, asshole that he is, wants to press charges, we’ve got to arrest you.” The elder of the two officers told him honestly.

Kevon looked at him and was brutally honest. “If he chooses to press charges, then you’ll have to do your job. I won’t fight you or fault you. He’d proved I was right in punching him since he started shoving me long before I finally punched him. But you do what you’ve gotta do.”

Thankfully, the other guys in the gym told Rod that he’d brought it onto himself. And they would make sure any judge or jury knew it. He didn’t press charges and Kevon wasn’t arrested. But he still didn’t talk to that jackass ever again. None of us blamed him, that was some ill, disrespectful shit for old dude to say on top of the fact that he was just pissed because he was an idiotic asshole…not for anything Kevon had actually said or done. I would never understand blaming everyone else for personal choices or shortcomings. That was some shit people were supposed to leave behind in childhood.

When I thought things through, I guess we really weren’t doing so badly at the main parts of adulthood. We’d found three great primary care doctors. Both Tonya and Tricie had found an ObGyn that they liked. We had found a dentist office that we all liked. Me and Kev had found an amazing barber. The ladies had found a beautician whose shop specialized in natural black hair. Tonya had never had a perm in her life and Tricie was ready to start walking her hair back to her naturally curly locks. Though truthfully, she only permed her hair, like twice a year anyway so it wasn’t really that big a deal. I guess it wasn’t all that surprising that we’d been able to find superlative Black hair care professionals in the Metro Atlanta area…but it still felt like an accomplishment. It wasn’t long after we moved in that we realized that we really needed two cars. Even with mass transit available, given where we lived and where we worked and everything…it turned out to be a necessity not a want. We’d already known that we were going to pull our original plan forward, but we hadn’t expected to not last out a full three months. By March, we were forced to admit defeat and begin the process of determining what car would be best for Tonya.

It would be the very first major purchase she’d ever undertaken. As it was for her and really, buying one’s first car was a mark of independence for every adult, I let her have the lead in all ways and on all things involved in the purchase. After driving my big ass SUV around her campus for a few months, her first decision was that she wanted either a compact or a sub-compact car. Considering that her great-grandfathers were both automotive workers back in the Motor City hey days, I was surprised that she chose a Subaru Impreza for her first car. But once she explained her reasoning I couldn’t fault her choice. “Von, this car is the only small car with good ratings in all five crash tests. I, personally, want to get the one with optional forward collision warning and low and high speed auto breaking. It is the safest compact on the market.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Not that I was arguing with her anyway. It was going to be her car and her decision. I was just there for her to bounce ideas off of. Once she knew what car she wanted, she researched cost and made the decision that she wanted to save up at least ten percent of the total cost and she did so all on her own. With no mortgage, and our cost of living steadily far below our monthly income, it only took her a little over three months to save fifteen percent of the cost of the car she’d built on the Subaru website. I stayed pretty much completely out of it. As the old saying went, it wasn’t my circus and they weren’t my monkeys.

Of course, not everyone had the same enlightened thinking that I did. Since we were married, we went to the dealership together the Monday before Independence Day. I was there less for emotional support and more because we were married, and the car purchase wasn’t just the first major purchase for Tonya, it was the first one of our marriage. In fact, when I thought about it, technically my parents had bought my Suburban, I was just there at the time to pick my preferred color and the like. So, it was kind of a learning process for me too. Besides, we filed our taxes jointly, so my information may have been legally necessitated. But before we even got that far, the first jackass that had popped up to help-some prick named Virgil had pissed Tonya off by first talking only to me and then by subtly hinting that we had bad credit. “Sir, I’m sorry. Let me stop you right here. Devon is not the person you are selling to. I am, and you know nothing about our credit rating. Now, I would like to see a different sales person, unless I need to leave here and go to one of the other four Subaru dealerships in the Metro Atlanta area.”

“No need for all that Little Missy.” The older man tried to hedge.

Tonya shook her head and turned and walked out of the dealership. We got back into my SUV and headed down the street to have brunch. Once traffic was clearer, we drove about half an hour to the other Subaru dealership on our side of town. The experience we had there was entirely different. We were greeted by a receptionist who actually spoke to both of us and very quickly realized that Tonya was the one she needed to be focused on. With that in mind she made a few calls and soon we were introduced to a young lady named Elizabeth. She and Tonya went through what size and kind of car she wanted and what features Tonya wanted her car to have. Then while Tonya was doing her test-drives, the receptionist took me over to the service department and showed me the vending machines and let me grab a soda and enjoy their wi-fi while I waited. I could have gone on the ride with them, but I knew that it was important to my wife to have her moment of true independence. We’d been together so long that a lot of the coming of age moments had been shared with me. She deserved to stand alone on this one.

She drove four different versions of the Impreza before settling on a crimson red pearl Impreza 2.0i limited sedan with black leather seats and the security features that she wanted. She also got a package with driver assist technology, blind spot detection/rear cross traffic alert, moonroof, multimedia navigation and a Harman Kardon premium audio system and another one that gave her upgraded map and dome lights from traditional bulbs to LED lights, all weather floor mats, auto-dimming exterior mirrors with approach lights, auto-dimming mirror with a compass, a lined trunk and cargo hooks back there. I was kind of jealous that she had a remote engine starter on her keys too. We had gotten preapproved for a loan through our bank but we kind of wanted to see what interest rate Tonya’s seven eighty-nine credit score would get through the vendors at the car dealership. We were okay with the three percent APR the bank offered us, until we found out that Subaru’s financing corporation looked at Tonya’s credit score and our combined income and, yes, I did have to give my pay stubs to establish household income, and gave us interest free financing. Tonya decided to still utilize her down payment, though Elizabeth said that part of the sale for the holiday was zero down and zero interest for qualified purchasers. My brainy wife also chose to have a slightly higher per month payment for a shorter loan period.

While they were settling the financing terms, I went online on my phone and added Tonya’s car to my car insurance policy. We’d already agreed to do it that way because it was less trouble and overall cheaper than her getting her own, separate policy. She was already an authorized driver on my policy anyway. Over all things took a lot longer than it had taken Mercedes the previous Boxing Day…and she bought two cars that morning. By the time we left the dealership, both of us driving our individual cars, we were starving. Of course, Elizabeth hadn’t let me leave without giving me her card. “When you’re ready to trade in your SUV, give me a call. We love good condition trade-ins.”

After a late lunch at Olive Garden, we drove home and Tonya’s car went into the garage, while I left my Suburban in the driveway. We’d made the decision that we’d work things that way because in addition to being safer, Tonya left the house later and got home earlier so it just made sense. Of course, it worked out well for another reason, too. We felt it only right and proper to christen my beautiful bride’s new car just as we’d christened mine on our first date after I got it. Of course, given that the Impreza was a smaller sedan, not a big ass SUV, the logistics were definitely different. But we made it work. Then we aired out the car and the garage so Tonya could show her baby, which she immediately named Pearl, off to Kev and Trice.

By the end of the summer, Patrice was visiting Elizabeth and trading in her much loved, decade old Corolla in for a pretty blue Crosstrek with a lot of the same features as Tonya’s Impreza. She was doing a lot of driving around the metro area, north Georgia and even southern Tennessee and northern South Carolina for her job and the firm she worked for reimbursed her for gas and car maintenance. She saved two of the monthly reimbursement checks and had her down payment easy. In fact, when she told her company HR person, one of the few friends she’d made there, Cydnee, got the upper echelon to change the way they did things and the engineers received corporate credit cards instead. It turned out to be cheaper for the company than paying the mileage rate. Me and Kev were starting to get pretty jealous. But there was no way we were wrecking our plans by moving too fast. We’d needed cars for the girls. We were good on ours.

It did seem like July and August really seemed to be a turning point for all four of us. It was like we finally had a handle on being adults. We’d enjoyed our time at Six Flags with MeDe and her boys so much that we actually got season tickets. The four of us went every other weekend. We’d take folks from our offices that we could stand, and ended up moving from ‘can stand’ to ‘somewhat like’ to something resembling friends. In fact, I really bonded with a couple of guys who I had assumed were the cool, Kevon types. But in taking the time to really get to know them, I found out that Tony and Ryan both loved comic books and had been to every Dragon-Con since they had moved to the ATL six years before. The duo went on all the Gotham rides with me like six times because they agreed with me that there was nothing as awesome as Batman.

Of course, not every summer weekend was filled with Six Flags and new experiences. There was the always wonderful Harris Family Reunion on the third weekend of July. Pretty much all the usual suspects were there. Though surprisingly Aunt Arielle didn’t even try to attend. Then again, I’d heard through the grapevine that the man she’d brought to Hannah’s wedding had requested a paternity test and dropped her like a hot potato when it came back positive, so maybe she thought it would be too humiliating to attend with everyone knowing how sheisty she actually was. The only other Harrises missing was MeDe and her hubbies. They weren’t there physically, they had tour stops in Missouri and Illinois that weekend. But while they weren’t present, their names were on everyone’s lips. My little sister may not be a huge fan of a lot of our Harris family members, but she never blamed the younger set for the actions, or rather inactions, of the elders. All of the kids in the family had either gone to the KAMA concerts closest to where they lived, or they’d received tickets from MeDe for the coming concerts nearest them. Most of the twenty-one and under crew were repping KAMA hard. But all the purple, silver and black walking around on our cousins weren’t the only changes MeDe had brought to the reunion that year. Two of our male cousins and one of the females had come out of the closet and there were several significant others who were dark enough to make Tonya, Dad and MeDe look light skinned. Several of the Harris girls and women were rocking their natural curls, rather than the usual straightened hair. It was all very refreshing. The adults were happier and the kids were freer.

However, there was a slight pall over the end of the event. Somehow, I got shoved onto the planning committee for the next five reunions. They always aged two or three of the older members off and added a couple of the younger set. Me and one of my second or third cousins, Jennifer, were tapped to represent our generation for the next few years. The summer before MeDe had started college, the hotel we’d used for years had been sold and we hadn’t been able to use it for the previous two years. Then when it was time to settle the plans for the twenty-sixteen through twenty-twenty reunions, we found out that the replacement hotel would be closing sections for renovations over the next two years and couldn’t guarantee that they would have enough rooms available. Once again, we needed to find a place for the future reunions. I listened carefully to the requirements for the type of hotel or resort we usually utilized. “Do we have to stay in the panhandle? Would people be willing to check out the eastern seaboard or even further down this coast of Florida?” I had quite a few questions. The older cousins were good about answering them all. Ultimately, the only real criteria that were set in stone was that it needed to be nice and clean, have meeting rooms and banquet halls for our dinners and it needed to have activities nearby for the family to enjoy without the planning committee to have to plan out every moment of every day of the whole weekend. Oh, and they wanted to keep it in Florida since the beach was a huge draw and the Caribbean would be cost prohibitive for the younger couples and larger families within the family. I actually volunteered to be one of the four who would be in charge of finding a new hotel for the yearly event.

As soon as I got back to the room Tonya and I had been moved to on Saturday morning; we’d accidentally broken the bed in first room due to our exuberant lovemaking Friday night; I asked Tonya if my idea for the perfect way to allow MeDe to get a little recompense from our prideful, hurtful family was wrong. “Think about it, MeDe, Noah and Sam are already buying apartment complexes all over the place. would a hotel really be all that different? MeDe could buy a hotel and make upwards of five hundred bucks off each room for the weekend and a hundred and fifty bucks or more a night off regular people the rest of the year.”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure that buying a hotel would cost a lot. And what do they know about running a hotel?” she pointed out.

“About as much as they know about running apartment complexes. They can hire people to make them money. Probably they would pay better than the other hotels around them. Making their workers lives better, making a lot of money and getting MeDe a small measure of revenge. It’s a win, win, win situation.” I defended.

“Well, if you’re going to give MeDe the idea, you need to have it fully fleshed out. Find the property, show her the profitability, the possible additional costs…all of it. You know that they don’t have all that much extra time to begin with and once they finish the tour, it’s back to school and yeah, naw…if you even want them to be able to think about doing this, you’re going to have to present it to them as a nice, neat package they can just say yes or no to.”

I thought about it and realized that she was right. So, after we returned to Decatur, I did some research into how to answer all the questions Tonya had raised and what other things MeDe, Sam and Noah would need to know. Then I set about researching the answers to all of them. I found a perfect place in Fort Lauderdale that was an oceanside hotel with two hundred and seventy-five rooms. It had meeting rooms, banquet halls, a spa and everything. They wanted five million dollars for it, but when I called and asked the agent if they would decrease the price if it was a finance free sale, I was told that the seller would probably come down to four or so million for an immediate sale. I sent MeDe and Mrs. Abrams everything I had found out and before MeDe had even called me back, Mrs. Abrams had hired an inspector to go over the place with a fine-tooth comb. She was able to get the cost down to three million and Sam and Noah loved the idea of sticking it to the family who had hurt their boo for so long, so they jumped on it. With it being my idea, they kept me in the loop. I probably should have realized that there was no way they weren’t going to do something to ‘thank’ me for the idea. Noah and Sam insisted that I had earned a ten percent finder’s fee for the idea and finding them a perfect property. I tried to argue that since it was my idea, it was my responsibility to find the property and make the decision as easy as possible. Puck countered back that if I didn’t stop arguing, they would make it fifteen percent instead of ten. Since they wouldn’t take it back and I didn’t really feel as though it was something I’d earned, I decided to take a note from their book and share the wealth. I put half of the original three hundred thousand into separate savings accounts for Kevon and Patrice. Then I put thirty percent in an account in just Tonya’s name and the last sixty thousand went into a CD for myself. It seemed like the perfect work around. I literally laughed all the way to the bank when I went in to make the allocations.

Ultimately MeDe and her boys ended up budgeting a little over two million on renovating and refurnishing the place. The former luxury hotel had been one of the last remaining properties of the now defunct Denizen Hotel Chain. It had some really great bones and all the work that was needed was to bring the place up to current codes and to modernize the hotel. They were even able to update the spa, which would increase the overall profitability of the property. Even better, Mrs. Abrams said that the city and state were giving them a pretty big break on their taxes and were making the whole process easier than was expected. Best of all was that since it was done under their property management group and they were renaming the place something generic, no one would know that it belonged to KAMA at all. Mrs. Abrams said that I had a great eye for properties and that I should let her know if I saw anything else that I thought would be a benefit to MeDe and her boys’ portfolio. I wasn’t sure that I’d be much of a help, but I would do anything at all the help my little sister.

As the summer started to wane, Tonya’s free time waned as well. She had really lucked out and only had to teach three Tuesday and Thursday classes during the summer sessions. That had given her a ton of time for her to relax and our house looked amazing. She’d taken her free time to get all the personal touches that we’d never found the time to do; framing and putting up our wedding picture, getting an awesome welcome mat that showed the world that we were still die hard Buffy fans while actually looking tasteful. The kitchen was fully stocked with coordinating countertop appliances. The kitchen had come with gorgeous fingerprint proof stainless steel appliances, fridge and freezer, stove and vent fan, built-in dishwasher, wine cooler and microwave…but we’d needed to get our own small appliances. Tonya had found a turquoise four slice toaster and decided that the color picked up some tiny veins in the stone of the countertop and the backsplash tiles. From there, she hadn’t been happy until she had a matching blender, Keurig, stand mixer, crockpot, toaster oven…the whole nine. We even had a matching soda maker. A few of those counter machines I was pretty sure she didn’t really know how to use, but it made her happy. So, I was happy. Besides, I got a ton of use out of that soda maker.

Still, once she had made our townhouse into a home, Tonya was ready to get back to work. Her class load was far fuller than it had been spring semester of the previous year. My gorgeous wife was teaching one hundred level French and Spanish. That meant that she had four Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes and three on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There were benchmarks each students had to reach, but other than that, Tonya was able to, and in fact encouraged to, create her own rubrics and she didn’t just create one for each language either. She created a total of four rubrics including projects, tests, oral evaluations, and exams. “These kids are not going to cheat in my classes.” She cackled. Tonya Olivia Neely-Jones took that cheating shit serious for real. Within those four rubrics, she had several different versions of her each of her tests and other assessments. “And since the computerized test is basically just a fillable PDF, I can easily change things around between classes, semesters and years.” She tapped her temple. I’ve got years of paper topic ideas in here. I’ll be 40 or so before I even accidentally duplicate one.”

Damn, I loved that woman. Seeing the pride she took in her work, filled me with pride and happiness for her. I wished my job could be as consistently fulfilling. The first six or seven months in my new job were pretty ratchet. I was replacing a guy who’d gotten caught up in a corruption scandal that had been big enough to make national news. He had been pretty well liked and certain people—most of whom had been on the way out when I started, they just hadn’t known it yet—had not liked me for replacing old boy. By the time we got to the end of March, all the house cleaning was done, and it had been a major extraction of deeply entrenched rot. By the middle of April, the search was on for both my boss and his boss as well. I was somehow given the responsibility of assisting a human resources crew that was almost as new as I was as they endeavored to fill over a dozen positions actual assessor positions under me. The firings and hirings ended up making us one of the youngest departments in Fulton county. Even the head of our office was only a little over forty. It certainly made things interesting in commissioner meetings and the like.

Once the office was fully staffed again, things got much better. Though that was when the real work began. The first thing we had to do was recreate the most basic document of our job. We had to establish truly uniform and equitable systems for assessing all classes and kinds of property. The corrupt asshats we’d all replaced had basically been running a pay for play situation where the property owners with the money for bribes could set their own property values. That created a skewed system that left certain areas over valued and others under valued and therefore ripe for forced gentrification. I was the direct supervisor of one team of fifteen assessors. They reported to me, and it was my job to make sure that everything was documented properly and according to the assessment table. I also issued the appraisal and tax reports for public record and served on the assessment review board. The job called for a few later evenings, but ultimately it was a damn good way to get my foot into the door. My ultimate goal was the City Manager of Atlanta position, and from there I’d move into the political arena…it was a good plan. I liked it. But that was years away.

There were times when I wanted to stay in that one summer. The first summer I really felt like an adult, the one where I finally figured out that yes, bundling home and auto insurance was a fucking great idea and whoever came up with it should have a fucking national holiday in their honor. The summer I realized that utilities were worth yelling about closing the door and not leaving the water running…those bad boys were ridiculously expensive…and anyone who didn’t think that the internet was totally just another utility that we needed just to be able to live life was a dickhead of the highest order. The summer that I realized that I was happy, and my family was happy, and the future was an amazing prospect not because I was so sure of what it held but because I wasn’t. But I knew that I couldn’t because if I stayed locked in that moment in time, I’d never understand a million other things…Like exactly how much my parents loved us kids. Because all parents assured me that that was something no one could understand until they became a parent themselves. Still, it was one hell of a summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are no words for all that I see happening in my country.  
> Bought and paid for politicians who MUST be reminded that the corporations may be able to buy them, but they cannot vote for them. 
> 
> People who refuse to acknowledge the differences between creeps & predators and want to punish both equally. Want to know the quickest way to shut down the current climate of believing assault and harassment victims? Allow people to keep equating those who make others uncomfortable with those who instill fear and who actively cause pain, humiliation and take what isn't their right to steal.  
> Ladies, we must allow our male allies to support us, but not allow the quasi-allies to take over and try and tell us when we should be offended and how we should feel.
> 
> On a personal note, all of the #MeToo & news of predators finally being punished is a great thing and truly amazing, but it's kind of making me have to reconfront things I'd put behind me. So, I can use all the Happy I can get. Please drop me a comment and make my day a whole lot brighter.
> 
> TTFN,  
> Anni


	17. Like I Can (Sam Smith) & Beautiful World (Kem)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake & Bubbie tell us all about their Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her beta reading awesomeness.

Chapter 16  
Like I Can (Sam Smith)  
Jake PoV  
Even though there were still moments when I found myself wishing things were different and I still had a relationship with my biological mother, I had to say, the life I did have made it so that those moments were pretty rare. I spent a week after the end of school with my Mom’s family in Alabama. I left Lima the same day that Tessa and Joe headed to New York. Birmingham wasn’t a bad city. The food was world renown. It was a bastion of culture and good sense as far as Alabama went. It was home to my grandmother and aunts and uncles and cousins. It was a hard place to be bored. The first day at Grandma’s was pretty uneventful. I’d flown in and she had picked me up at the airport. Then she dragged me to the mall when I confessed that I mainly had jeans with me. “Boy-child, it is a hundred plus in the shade when you add in the humidity. You walking round in jeans will see you laid out quick, fast and in a hurry.” She chided me.

I shrugged. “I was going to get some sooner than later. My ones from last summer are too snug in the thighs and too short now. Its just that things have been so busy lately that I haven’t had time to drag myself to the mall.”

“Well, no time like the present.” She reasoned. She drove us to the good mall, Riverchase Galleria. I’d never been to that one with her before. Hell, the whole family called it the White Folks Mall. Usually we went to California Fashion Mall if we didn’t just hit Sprawl-mart or Target near her house. When I questioned her she just shrugged, “I see the clothes you be wearing now Jacob, we ain’t gonna find clothes like that over at Cali.”

“Grandma, you know I don’t care what I wear. Long as it’s clean, fits, matches and makes me look good, that’s all I care about. I wear the clothes that Bubbie and Cede and Moms D and Becah give me to wear.” I told her mostly honestly. I did like the name brand clothes, but they weren’t a necessity.

She chuckled having read the hidden truth in my face, Malika Michaels was good like that. “We’re here, might as well go inside. But Jake, you stay with me. Rebecah told me what happened at Christmas in your mall in Lima. Here, that would have ended entirely different. So, you stick with me all the time you aren’t in a dressing room and even then, I’ll be close by. You understand?”

“Yes Ma’am.” I said, and I did just that. We started at Macy’s, then hit Old Navy, Spencer’s, Journeys and Hollister’s. Grandma paid at Old Navy, since the things I got there were on sale, and it only came to about fifty bucks, but I refused to even let her go for her wallet in any of the other stores we hit…even when she found things she wanted for herself.

She didn’t raise a fuss in the mall, but the second we were back in her car, “Jacob-”

“Look, Grandma, I get an allowance from Becah and George. I get an allowance from Noah, Cede and Sam. I live in a rent-free place with no utilities and I eat every meal at either Becah’s table, the Jones or school. I even have a summer job that pays pretty well. Thanks to my boy Roderick, we’ve got an online payment system in place that lets people pay automatically every month for yearly maintenance packages that include opening, weekly maintenance and closing the pools and everything. It lets us schedule the whole summer in advance.” It was a pretty boss system even if the website it was run through was a little expensive. Roderick was sure that it would pay for itself by the end of the summer and best of all, he’d done all the work on it for twenty bucks and me agreeing that he could work for the summer in a shirt which wasn’t strictly uniform, but it made him more comfortable.

“Roderick, he was the big white boy that could sing him some Sam Cooke, right?” Grandma asked me with a grin. I found myself telling Grandma all about my friends from school.

“Yeah, given the way he looks and his natural talents with computers, I’m pretty sure that Roderick actually is Abrams’ and Zizes’ love child sent back from the future somehow.” I joked. Of course, then I had to explain who Abrams and Zizes were, which made me tell her all about Puck, Cede and Sam’s crew too. That conversation saw us all the way back to her house.

That first day was just her and I. We made dinner together. She finally showed me her super-secret meatloaf recipe. I’d never thought of adding tarragon to a beef entree…but it worked. I also got her secret to her garlic mashed potatoes…that one was actually kind of obvious. Boiling the potatoes with the garlic and everything in the water with them so that the flavors were more developed. I felt a little derpy for not thinking of doing that myself. As we cleaned up behind ourselves, she caught me up on the happenings in her world. “I finally bit the bullet and took the semi-retirement option the post office offered me. Now, I work twenty hours a week inside the post office and I get that pay plus my pension. It’s a pretty sweet deal.” She chuckled. “Plus, it keeps me from turning into one of those old ladies who only leaves their houses on Wednesday nights for bible study and Sunday mornings for church.”

I laughed. “You were never going to be that kind of Grandma anyway. You have to drive to Bremen every Saturday to get your Cash 3, Play 4, Mega Millions and Powerball tickets for the week.”

“Oh, you hush boy.” She tossed the dishtowel she been using to brush some spilled breadcrumbs into her hand at my head. “If you’re gonna pick on me like that then when I win the big one, don’t come slinking over here with your hand out.”

“Aw, Grandma, you know you wouldn’t cut your favorite grandson out of your massive lottery win.” I said sweetly.

“Of course not. I’m gonna make sure that Neville has the best education that money can buy, Marie too of course. But Dereck’s got his degree already, but I’d help him with paying off his student loans and his house.” She said innocently.

I pouted. “Grandma.”

She laughed merrily. “You know I love you. But I don’t play favorites. Quickest way to ruin kids.” She admonished. “Remember that when you give me some great grands in a decade or so. Speaking of, how are things with you and your girlfriend, Chase? I liked her.”

“Chase is in Cleveland this week visiting her grandparents. We agreed to break up on August first, that will give her time to get her head back right before she has to get to Massachusetts on the twenty-fifth.” I admitted with a long sigh.

She looked thoughtful. “I’m sure its hard, since a blind man can see that you care about her, but I am proud of how maturely you two are handling this.”

“We were just supposed to be helping each other out, you know? Just scratching each other’s itches…but somewhere along the way, feelings got involved. She’s every bit as much my best friend as Ryder is…maybe even more because there are just some things he’ll never really be able to understand. He can empathize…he can sympathize…but he’ll never know. Ya know?”

She nodded. “Yeah, but the fact that he will empathize and sympathize…that tells you he’s a good man and a good friend.” She gave me a long measuring look. “I’m gonna tell you something that you’re going to wish that you’d never heard me say, but it is one of the greatest truths you’ll ever hear. Good sex…really, really good, completely satisfying for all involved, toe curling sex, is going to create feelings every single time. It’s too hard to come by for it not to. By the same turn, nothing destroys a relationship faster than sex that’s only a pleasure for one of the participants.”

I smiled. “I’ll remember that. I have to tell you Grandma, after overhearing Bubbie Ruth and Moms D talking about sex in far too much detail, I’m pretty much over the whole ‘mother/grandmothers shouldn’t know about-slash-speak about sexy times’ thing. Graphic doesn’t begin to describe it. Besides, I’ve seen Alicia in way too many situations with way too many dudes for me to still have those blinders on.”

Grandma found the first part of that hilarious. The second part, not so much. “I always told your mother that if she couldn’t keep her skirt down, she needed to keep her love life away from her home. But I swear, she always had to do the exact opposite of what I told her to do. If we’d been somewhere with somebody shooting towards us, and I told her to duck, she’d end up dead because she’d have to stand her ass up.” There was no arguing with the truth. Mom…Alicia…had always been the same way when I made a suggestion as to what she should do. I should have remembered that when dealing with her about Paul ‘Good Damn Riddance’ Puckerman. I said as much to Grandma and she agreed that she’d handled it all wrong herself. “I just, I never thought I’d live to be this ashamed of one of my own children. To throw her son, and you’re such a good kid Jakey…to toss you to the side for a prick like your sperm donor. I just don’t know what she was thinking? What I did wrong?”

“Grandma, you had five kids. Three of them are awesome parents. Four of them are amazing aunts and uncles. The fact that Alicia isn’t, clearly isn’t something that can ever be laid at your feet. There’s a black sheep or whatever in every family, right. My mother is just the one in the Michaels clan.” I soothed her fears.

Grandma chuckled. “I’ve got a son who has made a career…a fairly good one at that…of dressing like a girl. But it’s Alicia that we all agree is the family fuck up.”

I just nodded. “Yup. Oh, and remind me to ask Unc D where he got that lipstick in the red background glam shot on his website. Unique’s surgery is next week and I wanted to get it for her for when she feels up to dolling herself up again and she loved that pic.”

“You know that your friend is a few shades darker than D’Metrious. Why don’t you ask him to go with you, so he can help you find the right color for her?” Grandma suggested with a grin. We laughed and chatted through the rest of our dinner, then through the cleanup there after. The rest of the evening Grandma and I spent just talking and watching TV. Grandma was a really young looking sixty-five-year-old, but she still loved crime dramas, so we watched NCIS and Rizzoli and Isles. Then I turned it to USA so we could watch Anderson’s big brother’s show ‘White Collar’. It was starting as a summer show, but everyone in the fam and clique was hoping that it would get picked up for serious. I was glad when Grandma said that she liked it during the first commercial break and she texted all her peeps to tune in. “You’re little friend is a cutie and its good to see Kelly Kapowski working again. Now shush, it’s back.”

After the show, it was pretty much bed time. Grandma had to work the next day, so I was taking her car and rolling up to Huntsville to see Aunt Debra, Uncle Jamequez, Little Marie and Neville. Okay, so I actually spent most of the day with my little cousins while Aunt Debra did her work from home thing. I even got the little munchkins to help me make lunch for all of us. Aunt Debra drilled me with questions about colleges and majors and grades and everything. I drilled her with questions about when she was going to give me another little cousin to spoil. Then I spent the entire afternoon taking Marie and Neville to Toys R Us and letting them pick out three loud ass toys to have their big cousin Jake buy for them. By the time we got home Jamequez was back from work and he decided we should go out to dinner before I headed back to Grandma’s in Birmingham. Aunt Cat met us at Connor’s Steak and Seafood, an awesome seafood restaurant on the way out of town heading back to Grandma’s house.

Grandma had already had dinner and she was sitting in her living room having a beer with her gentleman friend Mr. Levi. Mr. Levi Calkin was a tall, retired electrician. A widower who had been ‘stepping out’ with Grandma for as long as I’d been alive. “Hey, Jake, how are you doing. Your grandmother was proud as a peacock showing half of Birmingham the videos of you performing in Atlanta. You and that guitar were made for each other.” He said happy for me. Mr. Levi was always happy for you in your moments of triumph and had amazing insights and wisdom when you weren’t feeling so triumphant.

“Thank you, Mr. Levi, I’m gonna go and take a long hot shower. I swear, Neville may not look like it, but that boy is solid. I think I pulled something the fifty-third time he got me to give him a piggy back ride.” I told them semi-honestly. I hadn’t even grimaced in front of the kiddos but the hour in the car had caused it to stiffen up and get angry.

“I have Epsom salts in my bathroom under the sink. They smell like lavender, but take a long hot bath with a couple of big old handfuls of the Epsom salt in there. You’ll feel better than you felt before you flung Nevie into the air however many times he conned you into doing it.” She gave me a wicked grin before taking a sip of her Corona. Her smile let me know she knew I was covering for my cousin. His mother did not approve of his love of flying.

I took her advice and had a long soak in ‘the kids’ bathroom. Grandma’s house had three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. The half bathroom had once been an under the stairs closet, but with three teenage girls in the house, it had needed another lavatory. According to Aunt Debra, Mr. Levi had been the electrician that Grandma had found to help do the work Uncle D’Metrious and his friends couldn’t do. No one looking in there would realize that most of the work had been done by one professional electrician, one professional plumber and six drag queens in their early twenties. The kids’ bathroom was between the boys’ room, where I slept when I visited by myself, which I’d done a lot more often before I’d discovered girls than I had done since puberty, and the girls’ room. Both bedrooms had been redone, hardwood floors had replaced carpets, the walls had been repainted a warm grayish beige, the old mattresses had been replaced and the beds were all covered in matching bedding. But the furniture was the same. The boys’ room contained a twin over full loft bunk bed that was made before furniture companies started half-assing things. The girls’ room had a more traditional bunk bed and then a single twin bed across the room. Since it was just me in the boys’ room, I slept in the full bottom bunk. The twin top bunk had always been my preference when I was little.

After my long soak, I settled down and spent an hour sexting with Chase before I was finally sleepy enough to go to bed. I liked Mr. Levi, but once I knew what those looks he gave Grandma meant, I tended to give them their privacy. I wasn’t sure if anything went down between the two of them that night, because, thankfully, that faux Greek Revival two story house Grandma had bought in the early eighties had thick walls. The next couple of days flew by. Grandma put me to work, doing some upkeep things around her house that needed doing. I painted the ceilings in all the downstairs rooms and helped her repaint her bedroom. Then when Uncle D’Metrious and Dereck got there, we pressure washed her brick exterior. She, Aunt Debra and Uncle Jamequez had patched the mortar the weekend before I got there, so it was all cured. The house was looking nice and clean when her friends and the rest of the family came to the cookout she had planned to show me off that Saturday. That was exactly what that cook out was all about too. Me, Dereck, Marie and Neville, we were paraded around so everyone could see how handsome-slash-pretty, smart, strong, etc. her grandkids were. Like seriously, she made a collage of Neville’s finger paintings and printed out Marie’s pre-K end of the year report card out and had it up on her fridge. I was introduced to way too many of her friends’ granddaughters. A few of them I probably would have dicked down if I hadn’t still been with Chase. The party lasted from noon to about eight, then it was just the family and Mr. Levi…and Aunt Cat’s new guy.

There was some serious hullaballoo as dude was whiter than Sam and Fabray. He worked with her at Boeing and they’d been dating for a couple of months. She’d introduced us fairly early in the afternoon, but neither Dereck nor I had had a chance to grill him properly. So, once it was down to just the family, we took a little time to find out everything we could about Jackson Bennett. It took me and Dereck less than ten minutes to realize that the dude was seriously sheisty muthafucker. After fifteen we knew that his ass was embezzling funds from the payroll account and wanted to get close enough to Aunt Cat to get her log-ins and shit to frame her for the crime. Okay, we may have only found that last bit out because the idiot had let Neville play with his iPhone and the kid was a tech wiz. He’d gotten the phone open and I’d taken a quick walk through the sheisty bastard’s emails. I wanted to kick his ass, since I was still a juvenile and probably wouldn’t do time. But Dereck convinced me to forward the emails to Huntsville PD and the guy’s supervisor. I may have accidentally sent them to everyone in HR at Boeing. I didn’t want them to think ill of my aunt for dating the douche nozzle. The emails laid his plan clear…get the money, blame it on the black chick, hopefully get a taste of brown sugar in the mean time and then dip to the left smelling like a rose. He was a racist, sheisty bastard.

That was the most exciting part of my visit. Aunt Cat took me, Dereck, Neville and Marie out to get something to reward her heroes, and Marie…‘cause she totally would have helped if she’d had a chance. I don’t know how the hell we ended up at Staples, but it worked out just fine. Neville was ridiculously happy with his two big ass crayon sets. They were large, one was eighty pieces and the other one had a hundred and fifty. The kid would be set for a while. Marie’s reward came in the form of two arts and crafts kits that were destined to end up all over Aunt Deb and Uncle Jamie’s big ass house. I ended up with a kickass new, blue, TI-eighty-four plus CE graphing calculator. I’d be able to use that for a while. I’d only ever seen it in grey or black before so having it in blue would set me apart from others, and make that bitch harder to steal. Dereck got a James Bond looking luxury pen set that cost as much as my calculator. We did try and convince her that we didn’t need such expensive things…but Catrina Michaels was as stubborn as all the rest of us with Michaels blood in our veins. She didn’t listen.

Sunday saw all of us on Grandma’s pew at Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church for morning service. Neville and Marie were pretty well known, like kid me, they’d attended church with Grandma a lot during the summers, more than me really since they lived so close. A lot of the older people remembered me from when I used to visit when I was little. I had to explain that I’d been working most summers since I was old enough to wait tables in Alicia’s diner. Either everyone knew what had gone down between me and Alicia or they were more polite than they were nosy, because they didn’t ask why I wasn’t working there anymore. Rev. Woods was a good preacher. I agreed with his interpretation of the word and he didn’t put me to sleep, so he was good in my book. Their choir needed an infusion of strong voices. They did alright, but then again, I may have been somewhat jaded. I knew some of the best singers in the world. Probably, it wasn’t far to compare the choir to them, but it was what it was.

After church, we had a big family dinner at Niki’s West Steak and Seafood Restaurant, mainly because Grandma didn’t feel like cooking. The food was good, really good. I was proud of myself for resisting the temptation to have any of the seafood. But it was a sabbath day, so even if it wasn’t technically my sabbath, it was still a day to keep kosher. It was a great day. We felt the absence of Alicia, but after Nationals, knowing that she’d come so close and still held herself apart, all of us knew that it was an absence of her own choosing. As far as all of us were concerned, we hadn’t done anything wrong and the onus of apologizing was on her. Unfortunately, she was both stubborn and prideful, so it might take a while before she actually managed the feat. Monday, Grandma and I spent cleaning the house, doing laundry, remaking beds and getting my freshly laundered clothes all packed up. It was a lot more fun than it sounded. The next morning, she drove me to the airport and it was back to Lima for me.

Chase was waiting for me at the house that evening after Becah and George had fed me and heard all about my trip. She and I talked through our visits to our families, then I went down on her until the only words she could form were my name and expletives. Before she could get her breath back, I rolled on a condom and sunk into her. We rolled around in my sheets until we were both sated and she had to rush to make her curfew. Though, honestly, if her parents hadn’t pushed it back after graduation, no way would she have made it. though it was a good thing she had to go home, really. Otherwise, I’d have spent all night making up for the fact that I’d spent a week with my own hand being my only relief…and I had to be at PPS’s store front at eight. A lot had changed since the days of Puckerman Pool Services being a tiny one or two-man operation.

That summer, PPS had a total of eight seasonal employees and one-year round receptionist. Ryder and Steven had done a great job holding down the fort. They’d even made good progress in training Roderick, Alistair, Mason and Spencer. But we were adding Jane and Madison to the roster of Puckerman Pool Services crew members and Sarah was coming in to start learning the ropes. She’d be there from eight to noon to answer phones and start learning how to do things like make up the schedules and track the workflow. Since we had so many workers the summer before, we’d expanded out…servicing all of Allen County. There were a total of seventy homes in the county with either in ground or big enough above ground pools that they didn’t want to bother with the maintenance themselves. PPS now serviced all but fifteen of them. 

We charged a slight premium over the national chain that had the other fifteen houses and the big county and school contracts. Our monthly fee was seven fifty during the summer and then there was a small hundred dollar off season monthly fee for all the homes that didn’t have indoor or heated pools. The ones with year-round pools paid summer prices year-round. But there were only four of those, so it was a cinch for me or Ryder to handle those on Saturdays during the rest of the year. The fees gave us a total of just under two hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars in yearly income. The year-round full-time receptionist made a little under twenty-five thousand a year. The summer crew made eight dollars an hour base and all the tips they pulled in were combined and divided up between them. The previous summer, Joe, Steven, Ryder and I had ended up pulling in enough tips to bring our hourly wages up to damn near twenty bucks an hour. Our supplies ended up costing us about fifty-three to fifty-four grand a year and the uniforms, I bought four pairs of trunks for myself and each of the guys off Amazon and had the PPS logo silk screened on by a lady in Downtown Lima. That summer I did the same thing for Jane and Madison, four identical red one-piece tank suits with built in bras for each of them and two pairs of short red water proof shorts. That came out to less than three hundred bucks.

I was very happy that before taxes and my, Sarah, Puck and Tessa’s cuts, not that Tessa knew about it or anything, we cleared over a hundred and eleven thousand in profit. Noah, Sarah and I agreed that she was one of us, so she got a cut. Thankfully, Saul and Mrs. Abrams were able to slip her cut into a high yield savings set-up for her future without her knowing about it. Granted Uncle Sam took a nice chunk of the hundred grand. But we still had money to re-invest in the business and give ourselves a decent yearly salary. I was pretty fucking proud of my management. Even if Puck usually just took his cut, divided it into thirds and shoved them into Sarah, Tessa and my bank accounts, it felt great that PPS hadn’t needed an infusion of funds from their founder since the summer after he’d graduated high school. I concentrated on spending the summer making PPS even stronger, making sure that Chase Harris knew that I would never forget her, and she would always hold a special place in my heart, and chilling with the family. I had the opportunity to sing backup for KAMA at a couple of their tour stops. Learned that I didn’t really want to make my fortunes as a performer…unless I could get a show like Pool Kings or something. That would have totally been boss as hell. I got to go to the Teen Choice Awards and my Instagram and Twitter blew up after that shit.

Before I knew it, it was time for the New Directions summer camp and which was followed immediately by Titan summer camp. ND camp was not awful, but it felt weird without Tessa or Chase. At least I had Sarah with me. She was seriously strong. By the end of the first day the freshmen were there, she had secured her place as a leader of the new class. She had the voice and the chops to back it up too. There were a total of ten newbies, four guys and six girls. One of them, a funny little bird named Dorothea Edgars, named for her great-grandmother, that girl sang like she was the reincarnation of Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald. Her voice made you think of speak-easys and civil rights odes. There was also a guy there with a range that would make Hummel proud. Dustin McMillian looked like he was thirteen going on thirty. He was just a freshman and the tallest guy in the choir. He was half Jewish and half Scottish. Dude had a glaring red Jew-fro that made him even taller. He opened his mouth and all the angels, Jewish and Catholic, wept. The other eight were good singers, strong vocals, good breath control, decent ranges and one of the girls had a vibrato that would be impossible to beat. But Dottie and Dustin, they were the best of their year easy.

The Dalton Boys had acclimated. Six of them had graduated and headed off to Wharton, Princeton, Northwestern, Stanford and Clemson. We had six rising seniors and six rising juniors. Funnily enough, they were harder to torment without their blazers. They finally looked like they were a part of the crew. They still loved vocal harmonization over instrumentation though. The dozen guys had taken to the drama of a regular co-ed high school experience with aplomb. The better-looking or richest ones got themselves Cheerio girlfriends. The smartest ones joined the AV club, Academic Bowl and the Mathletes. The athletic ones found spots on one of the Titans’ teams, football, wrestling, tennis and track. They were really the only ones in school who could compete with me and Sarah clothes wise. Lots of people wore name brands, even some of the higher end ones Bubbie and the family got us, but there was a certain way the pieces were put together that wasn’t something that everyone could do. Hell, I couldn’t. Bubbie and the Moms had pretty much made my closet idiot boy-proof. In the idea of starting things off as they are meant to be continued, Bubbie had made sure while we were on the road trip that Sarah and I, all the grands really, had a serious end of summer wardrobe in addition to a major back to school wardrobe.

There were decent work out clothes for the physical parts of the ND camp, and seriously durable workout gear for football camp. Between working out with Vince, Finn and Ryder in the mornings, cleaning pools all day, working out with Noah and Sam when we were on the road with them, Titan’s camp that summer was one of the easiest I could remember. Still even with my increased stamina and the extra twenty-five pounds I’d added to my bench, the week wasn’t actually easy. But with the fact that I was doing the four hundred in a little less than fifty seconds consistently and I was catching nineteen out of every twenty passes, with Ryder as starting quarterback and me as the starting cornerback-slash-wide receiver, we were going to have one hell of a year.

I hadn’t just prepped for football and later basketball either. Ryder and I had done our SAT prep course over the summer and made the arrangements to take the SAT on the earliest possible test date in the school year. We were taking the ACT and the ASVAB too, just to make sure that we had all our bases covered. Ryder was actually considering the military. I didn’t think taking orders full time for three to twenty was really something that I was cut out to do. Ryder just wasn’t sure that college was for him. His parents were trying to convince him to at least go to a community college and get an associates’ degree before he made a final decision. He was more thinking he wanted to go all or nothing. Personally, I had a list of seven schools I was trying to get into. Coach Bieste was putting together footage for the ones that had good programs. So was Coach Griffith for basketball. They both believed that I was good enough to get, at least, a partial scholarship. Despite, all that Puck, Cede, Sam and the parents were planning to so that I would be able to have a good start, I felt like I needed to do my part. I was looking forward to my senior year far more than I’d ever thought that I would. I just could not wait.

 

Beautiful World (Kem)  
Ruth PoV

I hated to be cliched, but I was closer to retirement than I cared to admit and, yet I was having the time of my life. I had a family big enough that I had to schedule time to talk to everyone and visit with everyone. I was thinking of creating a newsletter and sending it out every month just to make sure that everyone was all in the loop. Between Becah and Saul and their families, the Evans and the extended Puckett family, the Jones and the extended Jones, many of whom were now on my family contacts list, it was a lot of people to keep up with and I enjoyed every single minute. There was always such exciting news from the family. But that summer I had quite a bit of excitement myself. My daytime Emmy win had come just a month before it was time to renegotiate my contract with ABC and with my work for KAMA and a few of Deborah’s other new faces, they wanted me a hell of a lot more than I needed them. Those facts and the well-known secret that The Today Show had been trying to court me since they’d hired Savannah Guthrie had allowed me end up with a new contract that gave me a forty-five percent raise and twice as much paid leave time. I’d accrued almost eight weeks of vacation time since I’d started at the network. My new contract clearly stated that I couldn’t take more than four weeks off at a time, but when I signed it, I had a total of four months total paid time off. I was certainly very happy about that.

I was extremely happy about the raise too. While I had the extra money from the kids, Warner, and my rentals, the increased income had really only exacerbated my shopping addiction. I saved quite a bit for retirement, but I loved clothes. I loved shoes. I loved purses. I loved accessories. I loved home goods. It could have been bad, but thankfully I didn’t have hoarder tendencies. When I got bored with some piece, I gifted it to someone who needed it, or donated it to charity. I was also very happy that I had made the choice to have my master suite take up one entire side of the second floor of my house. It allowed me to have a huge dressing room that I’d once only dreamed of. My closet was eight by ten feet, with a nine-foot square center island dressing table with tons of drawers and the best lighting I’d ever had the pleasure to do my makeup under. The walls were painted a lovely dove gray the room smelled heavily of the cedar lining of the hanging sections and the accessory drawers and shoe shelves. The hardwood floor was covered in a plush, grey and turquoise heraldic patterned rug. I had a lovely, overstuffed, turquoise microfiber chair and a half, which matched the comfortable backed stool at my makeup station. There were hanging sections for dresses, blouses, pants, skirts, etc. fully encompassing three of the rooms four walls the last wall, the one with the door, had organizational shelves for all my shoes and boots. Handbags, scarves and other things that lived in drawers all had their own drawers in the center island. That room made me love getting dressed every morning.

I was fairly certain that I was going to do something similar for Nikki when she became a teenager. Personally, I wanted her to have to closet from Clueless. She’d probably rather have a room with white board walls for her calculations instead. The best decision I’d ever made in my life was to have that little girl come and live with me. She made me pay attention to things I’d done away with. I had a regimen once again. I did things like grocery shopping and cooking again. Though we did enjoy Viola’s cooking at least a few times a week. I didn’t have to do laundry, I hired Patrick for that. He was completely amazing. Since I didn’t need as much help with house cleaning as the kids did, I’d arranged to have a Maid Sailor maid come in and handle the deep cleaning twice a week and Nikki and I maintained everything in between. I had a blast reliving the best parts of raising a child and leaving the not so fun parts to her father and stepparents. I didn’t have to help with homework. Not that I couldn’t, I just didn’t want to. I had hated doing my own homework. I’d hated helping Saul and Becah with theirs. Nikki had eight young adults who all had their own homework to help her with that mishegoss. Though honestly, part of my hatred of homework was that Nikki was so much smarter than I was that sometimes I found it embarrassing. I’d excelled in mathematics all the way through school. At nine, she was already so far advanced that often, I felt a bit left behind. Noah…he and his little friend Brittany…they could keep up with it all and Noah and Nikki needed that time together. So, I saved my pride and allowed them to have the bonding time they needed. It was definitely a win-win. Win-win-win really, because I loved seeing the depth of affection that grew between them every single day. It was truly beautiful and made my heart glad.

I smiled to myself. Nikolette had been a very busy little girl since her mother had died and she’d come to live with us. Between school, grief counseling, music tutoring with Justin, he was the only one who knew both the violin and flute, and Erika for guitar, she’d had little extra time during the school year. It was funny, Mercedes had wanted to hire professional music teachers, but neither Erika nor Justin would allow anyone else to teach Nikolette, partially out of safety concerns driven loyalty and partly out of professional pride. I was determined to give her the very best possible summer. It was her first summer after her mother’s passing. It was her first summer with a father, let alone with his family. All the adults in her life agreed that we needed to do it up big for her. We’d had some differing opinions as to what that meant. Saul and Mills wanted to rent a beach house somewhere and whenever Nikki wasn’t with her parents on the tour, they would take her to the beach house for some fun in the sun. Becah and George wanted her to spend a lot of time in Lima with them and with Beth and the rest of the family. Sam and Mercedes just wanted her on the road with them as much as possible.

It was Noah who suggested the programming and robotics tech camp their friend Lauren had attended for years. She’d told him all about the challenges and how much she’d enjoyed the experience during the time that they were dating. He had been so certain that it would be the perfect thing, not just for Nikki but for her friends as well, that he had paid the tuition for all four of them and presented it to everyone as a done deal. “The Taylors and the Cuocos can just pay me back if they feel that they have to.” He announced joyously.

I took one look at how excited Nikki was about going to a mathematics, programing and tech based camp and knew that he’d made the right decision, but I had one question. “What if Jazmine or M&M’s parents aren’t ready for them to go off to Ohio for two weeks for sleep away camp?”

“Then three kids who have talent but not money would have a blast at tech camp.” He’d returned unconcerned. “Somewhere out there is a kid who makes Bill Gates or Steve Jobs look dumb but he or she doesn’t have the same chances we can give Nik-Nak. In fact, next year, if Niks and her crew like the camps as much as Lauren does, I’ll probably get Gwen to setup a few scholarships for the camp for those kids who just need a chance, ya know?”

“Have I told you how proud I am of you, Bubbela?” I asked around the lump in my throat. There were hugs and I made up my mind to get Gwen Abrams to setup an extra scholarship or two to the camp for me too. Noah was right, helping less privileged kids have a shot a better was a perfect way to ‘pay forward’ some of our blessings.

The summer started off with most of the kids hitting the road on their first major tour. Thankfully, Blaine Anderson was not among them. Blaine was a great kid. But he was also a kid who had spent a lot of his childhood around adults. He absolutely loved going kid-friendly things with Nikki. Best of all, since Noah, Sam and Mercedes had only shown him acceptance and friendship, he considered Nikki to be something akin to a niece. And he took his responsibility as a pseudo uncle very seriously. With his care and the help of Manny and Zip, Nikki was probably safer than most diplomat’s kids. During the week, the three men, Nikki, Marcus, Michelle often accompanied by Amanda Walton-Harris and her adorable little punim bears, EJ and Avery all spent time at the Children’s Museum, MoMA, the American Museum of Natural History, Coney Island and every zoo in the five Burroughs. I decided that other than his fiancé and Santana, Blaine was officially my favorite of all of my grandson and his loves’ friends. That kid took pictures of EVERY moment. Seriously, after the first week, he upgraded to a new iPhone just to have a bigger memory cache…and he was uploading all the pics to a new external hard drive he’d gotten every evening.

The third Saturday of the summer, when I joined the nine usual adventurers, as did Ethan, Saul, Mills, Elizabeth and Trey on a trip to the Central Park zoo, Blaine pulled me to the side. “I’ve found a great photo printer on Amazon and I’m thinking about making photo albums for Cedes, Sam and Puck and the other parents too of course.”

“Blaine Anderson, you are simply the sweetest guy. That is such a great idea. Can you make me a copy?” I asked him with a smile.

His face took on a proud smile in return. It was very charming. “Already in my plans, Madame Mayzer. I’d never for get about you. Do you think I should make a digital version for the Jones, Evans and Altman-Puckermans.”

“Oh yes. They will love that. We should get you into some pictures, so you can show your mom and dad how you fill your time off.” After that, Blaine made a concerted effort to let himself be photographed more often. He was a good kid and he deserved to have his fun. He was an almost perfect model of work life balance. Blaine planned their excursions weeks in advance, taking the morning or afternoon as needed. He had a whole system. Apparently, different activities were best undertaken at certain times of day to ensure the best experience. Zoos were a morning thing while museums were better visited in the afternoon.

I later found out from his father that Blaine’s internship sponsor was basically in love with the kid. “Thomas says that Blaine does three times the work as the next college kid and that’s with taking a couple of half days a week. Thomas swears that no one would believe that he is the owner’s kid. I’m fairly sure that if cloning was a thing, Thomas would create himself a whole army of Blaines.” Will’s voice was filled with well-deserved pride in his youngest son.

Poor kid was pretty bummed when I took his playmate to go visit her parents. Nikki and I had a blast though. She got to have new experiences and see things that were entirely different from what she’d known in the northeastern parts of America. Taking her through a couple of southern states gave her some added insight into how truly different facts could be seen and taught. “Bubbie, I thought facts were just true and no matter what they were the facts.” She had asked quietly was we rode the KAMA buss from Atlanta to South Carolina.

“They are Darling Girl.” I responded.

She looked even more confused. “Then how come that man on the news this morning was talking about the Confederacy and making it sound like they were the good guys and should have won the Civil War? They weren’t. They were really, really, really wrong. He even said that the war was about states rights. But it was about slavery and treating Black people like people and making them all citizens. Why did he say all that like it was the truth?”

I sighed and tried to figure out how to answer her question. Finally, I pulled her closer. “Darling Girl, remember when you misspelled only on your spelling test because you were going too fast to realize that you’d switched the N and the L around…but your teacher didn’t notice either?” she nodded, so I continued. “Well, only isn’t actually spelled olny. But what if your teacher didn’t want to admit she’d been wrong. Didn’t want to own up to what she’d done….so instead she taught everyone she taught from then on the wrong way to spell only. For the next twenty years thousands of people learned something that wasn’t true but believed that it was. Then those thousands of people taught other people that same wrong information. They teach their kids and so forth and so on. Just because a lie is taught to a lot of people…even in those people all believe that it isn’t a lie…that doesn’t make it less of a lie. But even when they are told how wrong they are, they believe the lie so hard and have believed it so long they cannot admit the truth, even to themselves.”

“So, he wasn’t just a racist asshole?” she returned.

“Okay, language, young lady. As for whether or not he was a racist…probably he had some inherent racism that he learned along with those lies about the Civil War. After all, there are plenty of White Southerners refuse to believe those lies, because they aren’t racist.” I chided and then informed.

Nikolette gave me a small bit of side eye. “Papa and Gampa Sander both said that the nicest word they could call someone who was a racist or a bigot was asshole.”

I thought about it. I tended to call anyone spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric Nazi-Muthafuckers. I could certainly see their point. “Alright, I guess you can use that word to refer to racists, bigots and misogynists. But remember when it comes to the other curse words…”

“No cursing until I’m thirteen and then only the mild ones until I have my own house.” She quoted Cede’s rule by rote.

“And why?” I prodded.

“Because stooping to other people’s levels in discourse doesn’t win me anything and only demeans me and whatever point I was making.” Nikki responded.

With an irrepressible grin, I added. “Yeah, besides, it isn’t lady like and really intelligent people usually sound kind of wrong when they cuss.”

“Bubbie, you, Abah, Uncle Saulie, Artie and Tana all curse like its your jobs…and all of you are really smart.” My beloved great-grand daughter pointed out.

“Yeah, well, we all practiced a lot.” I said dismissively. “Now what news were you watching this morning. When I got up, you were watching cartoons.”

“Oh it was whatever channel was on in the lobby and restaurant at the hotel.”

I shook my head. “That was Fox News, Darling Girl, never watch Fox News. Those people lie like they breathe…constantly and without thought.” I stopped myself before I could start to rant over the brainwashing of our poor troops with that vile malicious garbage.

Nikki sighed. “Bubbie, are we gonna be with Abah, MeDe and Papa when they go to Charleston?”

The way I had everything planned out, the answer to that was no. We were supposed to go straight home from Ohio since I was planning on taking more vacation time later in the summer after she and her friends got back from summer camp. But she looked so hopeful and in all honesty, I could stand to spend some time on the beach. I was fairly certain that the beach was the entire reason she’d asked her question. “I suppose we could stay with them until they go back to Carolina.” She started getting excited. “But, if we go to Charleston, we’ll only stay two days. We won’t be going to the concert there, just spending a day or two at the beach and then it will be time to go home. I have to get home by Thursday, so we can get everything cleaned back up and I can get some rest before I have to be back to work on the twenty-nineth.”

She gave me a happy hug, promising to enjoy the beach but not beg for more time thereafter. “Bubbie, Thank you. I love going swimming and the lady at the hotel said that Charleston had the best beaches on the whole east coast.”

I’d heard that comment. But I had also heard her coworker’s argument that Tybee Island, off the coast of Savannah, had even better beaches. I didn’t share that information since we wouldn’t have the time to visit both beaches. We all had a lovely time in Lima. Benton, George, Sander, David, Noah and Sam all deserved the best possible Father’s Day. Finding out that little Bethany was going to be a big sister was a wonderful surprise. Though it did make it harder for both Danica and I to hold in the secret Millsey had shared with us and asked us to hold in the strictest confidence. I was so very excited about that bit of news. It was ridiculously hard not to tell everyone I knew. But given the fact that my husband and I’d had conception issues and Mills mother had had a history of early miscarriages, I did understand why she was so desperate not to make a big announcement until after she reached her second trimester. But I was allowed to be excited. My only son was going to be a daddy. Finally, and with a woman he’d loved enough to marry. Not just an oopsy daisy baby that I would only have gotten to see sporadically. I was so happy I almost didn’t know how to contain it all.

After our short and impromptu beach vacation, Nikki and I retured to our Harlem brownstone and immediately fell back into our summer routine with one minor difference. We had to get everything ready for her, Jazmine, Marcus and Michelle’s approaching adventure at tech camp. Not to say we had a ton to do. Sam had gotten the fearsome foursome twenty-one matching sets of tee-shirts with math, tech, sci fi or any combination there of as long as he found it humorous, or had slogans or memes on them. A few were actually specifically made just for the kids. Several of them were actually almost universally funny. Cede had picked out seven different swimsuits for our little girl since they would have the option of going swimming during their ‘retro games’ time. I’d made sure that Nikki had sixteen sets of panties and the racerback tee shirts she liked to wear and that all of them had her initials painstakingly sewn into them unobtrusively with the softest teal and dove gray flat silk embroidery thread I could find. We’d gone through her closet and packed all six pairs of denim shorts she owned, her two pairs of denim capris, and a couple of pairs of jeggings. I was trying to decide if I needed to go and buy her more shorts while I happened to be talking to Dani.

“Ruth, she’s coming here both weekends, just tell all four of them to bring their dirty clothes with them and I’ll take care of it. What is that child going to do with fourteen pairs of jean shorts?” Dani chided me. I felt a little sheepish. But she was right, Nikki would hate the excess, and Danica was almost as good at laundry as Patrick. Still, I kind of felt like shopping so I took her and got her a new pair of sneakers instead. Those she actually kind of needed. She had almost outgrown and definitely worn out her favorite pair. We also took care of a few necessities that I, personally, never felt any little girl could have enough of, socks and hair bands. Packing was pretty easy. It was the other things we’d accomplished in the week or so that we were home that were more cumbersome. Thankfully, I’d gotten the truly hard stuff out of the way before we’d joined the tour. One of the very first things I’d done when my guardianship was settled was to find Nikki a pediatrician. I was fortunate with my Ob-Gyn and her practice included one of the best pediatricians in the city. Dr. Sanford had seen Nikki within the first few months of her moving in with me.

“While she is in the lower ranges for height and weight at her age, she isn’t underweight. She could definitely stand to increase her iron intake as she is a touch anemic…but according to her records, that is pretty much a constant battle for her. Her vaccinations are up to date. She is a healthy little girl.” She’d told Noah and me. We’d been relieved. Not that either of us had doubted that Mabel had taken care of her daughter…we’d just realized how easy it would have been for a worried and upset child not to eat and in all that was happening at the time, who would have noticed?

We were back in Dr. Sanford’s office in early June. According to the camp’s list of suggested vaccines, Nikki needed a tetanus and a TB booster and they highly recommended a meningitis shot. Nikki was not a fan of needles, but Dr. Sanford’s nurse, Barty, was damn good at his job. He kept Nik-Nak distracted talking about the fun things she was looking forward to doing that summer and was done before she really knew it had happened. By the Thursday before the Fourth of July, Nikki was all packed and more than ready to go. She was so excited, that she was texting with her parents, M&M and Jazmine like crazy. It had been really fun watching her pack. She’d taken the list of fifty-five items the camp had sent her and augmented it with things that were just perfectly her. The small, plush purple and pink elephant Bethany had gotten her for Hanukah, the huge Sudoku book Artie had given her just before we separated in Charleston…she’d had a hard time but she was determined to save it for camp down time. I watched as she contemplated taking her lady bug tracker earrings before deciding that her unremovable necklace would be enough. I made sure that she packed all the needed toiletries and her shower caddy and extracted a promise from her that she would shower every day and wash her hair at least three or four times a week. It wasn’t a major concern, she tended towards being a neat and clean kid. But any kid might let themselves get a little gnarly when they experienced freedom for the first time.

Quicker than a blink, Nikki, Manny, Zip and I were heading back to Lima accompanied by Marcus, Michelle, Elizabeth and Trey Taylor and Jazmine, Fina and Nicholas Cuoco. Danica and Benton had opened up Commune’s house for all of to stay for the Fourth of July weekend. Since they wanted to be together and none of us were really comfortable leaving them by themselves on the first floor, The Fearsome Foursome decided to camp out in the Library. Which worked out well. Fina and Nick took the guest room on that floor while Manny and Zip took the two of the ones on the third floor and Elizabeth and Trey took the larger guest room on the floor with my bedroom. As soon as we were in and somewhat settled, we were dragged back out to attend the Annual Jones Family Independence Day BBQ, capitalizations fully intended.

Benton, Sander and the girls all showed out. There was just so much food and it was all so amazingly delicious. I’m certain we all ate too much. But, oh, we all had so much fun. Most of the New Directions families were present and it was very much a community event. Nikki, Marcus, Michelle and Jazmine had a blast playing with Triple S, Double A-S, Robyn, Jeanie and the Berry Triplets…and some miscellaneous New Direction younger siblings, plus a few of Robyn’s cousins that had gotten dragged along with her grandmother. Monique Jenkins seemed to think that by exposing her grandkids to the Adams and the Jones and Antwan Berry as much as she could, it would break the cycle in which her family seemed to be stuck. No one could fault her for wanting more for the next generation and none of the people in question minded helping her try at all. She and I had a lovely conversation. We came from two very different backgrounds, but the language of grandmother was somewhat universal. After she left to get her young ones corralled and home, I had entertaining conversations with both Sue and Shelby.

Sue, and her husband Don, were mainly pumping me for information about Sugar and how she was enjoying, or not enjoying, being on the road with KAMA. I got why Don was curious. Sugar called him twice a week and sometimes kicked in an extra call on Sunday. He may have thought that she was holding back on some things. But Sue talked to Sugar every single day. I guess she just worried. She should have been more worried that I was going to give into my urges and steal her cute little angel Jeanie. She was the sweetest child I had ever had the pleasure of knowing and I had been blessed in the grand and great-grand categories.

My adopted adult niece Shelby was due the week of Christmas and she was glowing. It may have also been a good thing that the girls and their hubbies had made so much food. She was eating like a teenage boy. It was spectacular to see. She and David had decided not to find out the gender of the baby and were going unisex in all things infant. I was having a ball shopping for baby clothes and loveys that would work for either gender. A part of me hoped that Shelby would have a girl and Mills a boy. Though the babies would probably be raised thinking of each other as cousins …so it wouldn’t really matter, but still a Bubbie could dream.

Elizabeth and Fina had a good time too as did their husbands. I was pretty sure that it was the first time Elizabeth had ever been to a fly over state so sometimes she came across a little Jane Goodall about her interactions. Like she wanted to integrate with the different society without changing or disturbing the natural order. Trey spent a lot of time chuckling at her behind her back. Nicholas spent a good deal of the evening chatting with Gwen and Antwan. Apparently, he was a contract lawyer for some big corporation or something anyway the three of them seemed to have a great time talking while Fina traded recipes and advice with Dani and the rest of my girls. By the time Manny and Zip gathered us all up and Danica and Gabby forced quite a lot of leftovers on us to head back to the kids’ house, I was exhausted and the kids were running on fumes. We did manage to get them all showered and into their pajamas before they passed out, but it was a close call.

The next morning I got the kids up and dressed, and the four of us and Zip joined the family at ADA. I liked experiencing worship of the Heavenly Father. Since, we hadn’t made it to Temple the night before, I wanted to go to church with Dani and the rest of the family. I did prefer to go to ADA over the Episcopal Church, but that was a matter of personal preference. Jazmine was right at home, M&M had never experienced the like. When we got back to the house the twins couldn’t wait to tell their parents all about a church that was exciting and had amazing music and didn’t make them sleepy. Fina and Nick had enjoyed sleeping in so much that they were still asleep when we got back. Well, that’s what I told Jazmine when we got there, and her parents weren’t in the living room with Liz and Trey. Once the adult Cuocos were up and dressed, all of us made our way to Becah and George’s house. For what basically amounted to a play date for Nikki, Jazmine, Marcus and Michelle with all the kids of the Evans-Jones-Puckerman clan.

There were no words for the pride I felt for the fact that my daughter was going back to school to make her dream come true. She’d always wanted to be a doctor; she and Neil would talk about it ad nauseam whenever they got together. He had done exactly as he wanted and become a heart doctor. But life had happened for Becah and she’d settled for being a nurse. Not that there was anything wrong with that, it just hadn’t been what she wanted and dreamed of doing, it was all she was able to do after running into that damn Paul Puckerman. I was not the kind of person who rejoiced in harm befalling another…but I was so happy that he was dead. Especially since neither Saul nor Noah had been the ones to send his ass to hell. Anyway, Becah had worked her last days as an active nurse, though she was planning on keeping her certification current and up to date. Her final day at St. Rita’s had been June fifteenth. She had been changing back and forth between going to OSU med school and the more prestigious and further away Case Western. “OSU is closer and it’s a solid school.” She would say, but we could all tell that she wanted Case Western so badly. Probably even more after she decided that she wanted to change her focus from pediatrics to trauma surgery. Rebecah had been very, very inspired by the doctors who’d saved the life of that sweet heart Finn, her son’s life long best friend and a young man she still saw as the adorable little boy he’d once been. Case Western was the best school in the state for that program.

My daughter had always been more pragmatic than I’d ever been. She looked at the problems and made the best choice that she could to mitigate them. Me, I wanted what I wanted and said fuck the world I was going to have what I wanted. Well, when it came to my daughter…her husband, brother, children and I would damn the world to make sure that she had what she really wanted, not what she was willing to settle for. Between the four of us, we’d set things up so that she couldn’t take, what was for her, the lesser choice. The application process had taken the better part of a year and, so we’d had plenty of time to skew things our way. Once Becah had gotten her acceptance packets from the three schools that had said yes, George had hidden the packet for OSU and Tessa sent in her official notice that she would attend CWRU medical school for the following four years. Once that had been done, I’d stepped in an arranged her a tiny studio efficiency apartment that she could use on those evenings that she had a late class or needed to study or just couldn’t handle the almost three hour drive back to Lima. The place was furnished and she could get rest without fear or worry and it was close enough to the med school that she could park there and walk over every day anyway. Saul had juggled some of his funds and he and Mills had taken a romantic weekend to an Upstate New York resort near the border that just happened to offer gaming thanks to the Akwesasne Mohawks. The two of them, yes we got Mills in on it too, they won enough in that one weekend for the pool they were wanting and to make up a full year of the difference in tuition between OSU’s thirty thousand a year and Case Western’s almost sixty.

But the bulk of the work had come from Noah and his loves and their parents. Sam and Cede decided that Rebecah should get a car for her birthday and that a brand new Subaru Forester was exactly what the doctor ordered. Danica, Benton, Sander and Gabby paid the rent on the studio apartment for the remaining ten months of the lease. Noah, though it was all three of them really, paid all the tuition that remained. We presented all the finalized school and information and the keys to Becah on her birthday, though Commune couldn’t be there as they were performing at Coachella at the time. There were tears, there was joy and there was gratitude. We were all happy. She didn’t even seem surprised or shocked, which led me to believe that George had confessed. I didn’t blame him, pissing off one’s spouse is never a good idea. It may have been the only call he could make.

Rebecah had orientation during the same week the kids started their camp. So, when Noah, Cede and Sam showed up early Monday morning to take the kids to their camp, I talked Becah into taking a ride up to her apartment just to see in advance if there was anything she would need. George was working as was Jake and Sarah was doing some bonding thing with the JV Cheerios, so Becah had no reason to say no. But when she waivered, I guilted. “Come on…I was supposed to get to do this twenty years ago.” I pouted, and she caved.

It was actually a good thing we did. The efficiency was just what it purported to be. The two hundred and forty square feet had a bed, a loveseat and coffee table, a TV stand that could double as a bookcase, a small closet, tiny kitchen with an under the counter fridge. There had been some small attempts at decorating, but even if she was only going to be there sporadically, it needed some work. So, we made a few stops to places like Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Goods, places like that. It was so much fun. we got her some decent bedding and pillows for the queen bed in the studio, and like five mattress pads for it, not just for germ protection, that thing was legitimately hard as a rock. She grabbed a slip cover for the loveseat and some air fresheners and such. We got cheap dishes and coffee maker for the kitchenette and a shower curtain, towels and bathmat for the bathroom. Then we doubled back and got cleaning products and we gave the whole place a good going over before we got it all set up for the first time she might need it.

I convinced her to get a large storage container and fill it with things that she would need if she had to stay overnight. “Look, I don’t want you getting on the road tired because you didn’t pack a hair dryer or shampoo or something that you can store some here and it be waiting on you if you need it.” I finally said exasperatedly.

“Fine mother.” She groaned. I didn’t think she needed a lot…but certainly cleanser and moisturizer, shampoo, conditioner, a hair dryer and some basic cosmetics. Once all that was bought and stored, we headed back to Lima. “I guess I should bring up a change or two of clothes just to make sure that they are in the apartment if I do need to stay over.”

I didn’t gloat, but I didn’t hide my happiness. “Good, I’m your mother, I worry.”

We shared a short chuckle at the universal subtle indication of maternal guilt. The drive back was filled with laughter and teasing. To be honest, it was a perfect end to a great day with my daughter. Unfortunately, the next day I was back at work and alone in my big rambling house. At least I had a lot of things to keep me busy. It was a key time in planning out the fashions for awards season. Mercedes Jones was a serious feather in the cap of any designer who wanted to prove that they could design glamorous looks for a plus sized woman. And many of them did because body positivity was taking off as a social issue. It made sense, the important thing was that a person was healthy, not that they fit a certain size of clothing. The problem was that everyone had started to equate a certain physical appearance with being healthy and optimal health was about having good blood pressure and A1C and all the rest of the medical indicators of health. Mercedes was quite healthy as was Dani. Benton had some blood pressure issues…but then again so did Sander. It all depended on the person and not their shape. There were skinny people who had high blood pressure and a whole host of other problems. I was working on getting healthier and eating better. For too many years I’d been so consumed with fitting designer clothes, that I hadn’t paid attention to nutrition. Having Nikki with me had made me change my ways. But I did have to exercise more than I’d needed to when Saul and Becah were kids to maintain my same dress size. Thankfully, I could usually fool myself into exercising by getting Brittany to teach me some new dances…by the time I’d learned all she wanted to show me, I’d gotten at least forty-five minutes to an hour of aerobic exercise in and learned something new.

In addition to my nine to five, I was trying to gather together a season’s worth of fashion without duplicating any major style elements for Mercedes. On top of that I was trying to corral enough different suits for both Sam and Noah that they didn’t make men’s fashion even more boring. I pitched in helping Haja and Kurt in decorating the offices that the kid’s property company would inhabit. I did some extra styling work for a fair few of Deborah’s young up and comers. I filled my down time by visiting Saul and Mills and I was helping them to plan a way to announce the baby to everyone after the kids got back in September. I filled my other evenings with Deborah and a few of her friends. I did enjoy being with both a male and a female at the same time, it left me satisfied in a way that was almost as good as making love with my late husband. That had been bone, no, soul deep gratification. Nothing since had compared.

Anyway, I kept my time filled and before I knew it, the two weeks were up. rather than me flying back out to Ohio to get the kids, Dani and Gabby flew to New York with the Fearsome Foursome, Manny and Zip. All four kids were ridiculously excited to tell me all about their camp experiences. We had dinner thanks to Viola who was really bored without the usual cadre of eaters all in her care. Elizabeth and Trey joined us all for the meal and then left with their munchkins. The Cuocos joined us the very next morning and after a great lunch together, they headed back to Massachusetts. Dani and Gabby spent a few days playing with Dani’s brothers and sisters in law and having meals with Nikki and I. A great time was had by all.

The next few weeks were a flurry of activity. I was getting everything at my day job ready for me to go on vacation for the first couple of weeks of August. Nikki and I went through her closet and donated half of everything, some she’d outgrown, some pieces were purchased before we really had gotten to know each other, and it just wasn’t to her style…some of it just needed to be purged to ready her closet for the coming school year. Then she talked me into doing the same with my closet. I didn’t have much left to do, I went through my closet for the next season while she was gone to help with the missing her. Since most of it was children’s items, we called the Big Brothers/Big Sisters charity to pick up our donation and there may have been a monetary donation included in there also. Nikki was finally ready to pull the trigger on making her bathroom more hers, so we got her new towels and changed out the décor to some things that took it from a guest bath to a bathroom suitable for a ten-year-old. Because the simple and elegant tiles, fixtures and paint remained the same, it would be really easy to age the room up as she grew.

Going back on the road was intriguing. Nikki and I joined Benton, Dani and all the combined kids of the Jeverman tribe in a twelve bunk RV with a back lounge that converted into a queen size bed. It wasn’t a bad way to travel. But the best part was that I was with Mara and Maea, Gabe, Sarah, Stacey, Stevie, and Jake…oh and Dani and Benton too. We left out following the tour when KAMA left Ohio. We experienced several new and unfamiliar culinary delights. Jake got to act as one of KAMA’s background singers. We got to spend a ton of time with Tessa and Joe who had to head back to Lima with us to go to their freshman orientation. That week after the Teen Choice Awards, which my grandbabies all looked amazing at no matter what that asshole of a photog seemed to think, the college bound freshmen were training two of the KAMA part timers on how to run the swag booth. I liked how seriously they took their work with KAMA. It was good for them to have real responsibilities like that. Especially Tessa who’d been pretty sheltered in a lot of ways before she’d come to Lima and fate had intervened.

I loved hanging out with all the kids. Dani and I did all their ‘back to school’ clothes shopping together at different malls near where the big kids were performing. I did have to say that the boots we found in the ‘flyover’ states were really, really well made and sturdy. I guess they had to make sure that their footwear would survive multiple feet of snow every winter. I also noticed that the colors for backpacks were different than what I’d seen in the same stores in other places. It made a certain level of sense that different regions would get different colors of the same items…just to keep things interesting. Nikki loved how prevalent teal and turquoise was out west. I was glad that I could ship things back to Saul and Mills. Tessa and Joe were able to get several things, warmer than usual blankets, thick and warm sweaters, long johns…I didn’t even know those were still a real thing, thermals yes but not long johns. A lot of those were being shipped back to their home in Lima, too.

As much as I loved being with the great grand babies, I was rather glad when it was time to head back to real life. Nikki and I spent an extra day or two in Lima to help Tessa get everything all packed up for her big move. It was almost all of it was her clothes and her tech. She made the rather wise decision to take her kit from the tour bus with her and use the sleeping bag and travel pillow while she abused Amazon or the mall to get what she needed. She did make one rather large purchase before she left. I’d heard through the family grapevine that she wanted to trade-in her cute little Focus for something heavier that would be better able to handle the Iowa weather. I’d also heard that she had forbidden her rather well-heeled siblings from helping her with the purchase. It was so cute that she really thought that I would allow my eighteen-year-old granddaughter to tell me how to spend my fun money. That just was not going to happen.

So, when she, Becah and George headed to go car shopping on Sunday afternoon while the younger kids and Nikki were playing with Gabby watching over them, I decided to join the Altmans. I was a little surprised when George passed by the Lima dealerships and out of town. “Dad?” Tessa asked before I could.   
George just smirked a little bit. “The Subaru dealership is in Findlay.”

“And the Subarus are the best for snow other than the Jeeps. You said that you didn’t want to have the same kind of car as Joe, so…” Becah reminded her. 

“Will they even take a Ford for trade-in?” Tessa asked confused.

Laughter was squelched quickly. “Yes, Sweetie. They are going to love your trade in since it doesn’t have all that many miles and is in such good condition. You have your title?”

“Yup, title, registration, driver’s license, insurance card…the pre-approval from the bank.” She held up a green plastic two pocket folder that seemed to hold everything she would need.

When we got there, Tessa was really only wanting to see used cars. I shook my head. “Come here Bumble Bee. Look, I know that you are wanting to be very independent and do this all by yourself…but just try a twenty-fifteen one. I know that certified pre-owned is supposed to be good, but you’re getting this new car to have something snow worthy at any given moment. I will worry less, your father will worry less, Becah will worry less, all your brothers and sisters will worry less if you’re in the most dependable car possible.”

She started to look mutinous, “Bubbie…”

I threw her a raised eyebrow. “Give me three good reasons that you just have to have a used car.”

“Well, they’re less expensive.” She started.

I shook my head. “Maybe on purchase price, but even the good ones tend to bleed you dry on maintenance costs. A new car will come with a maintenance package, so you can get oil changes and tire rotations and things like that for free. Even with a certified used car, you’ll be replacing tires sooner rather than later, possibly brakes and other parts too. Your cost argument is null anyway given the incentive package I just heard that salesman talking about…Next?”

“Cheaper insurance?” She seemed to be asking rather than telling.

“The car is going on your parents’ policy, it will already be cheaper than what you could get on your own at eighteen.” I reminded her.

She stammered a little bit. “I only had budgeted for about four hundred dollars a month for my car payment. If I go new, no way can I afford the payments.”

“If you go new, I will put down however much I need to in order to keep your payment under three hundred a month. I want you in a car that you don’t have to think hard about owning until you’re in grad school.” I told her in total honestly. “I am willing to give you my entire fall fashion budget to make sure that I can sleep at night without worrying all winter about your car leaving you trapped in a snow drift or something.”

She looked over at her parents. Becah just shook her head. “Sorry Sweetie, but I’m with Mom on this one. You know I’ve been trying to talk you into the new car since you told me your idea.” 

George laughed. “Why are you fighting it so hard?”

“Its just not normal. I’m going to college owning a great house and now a brand new car…that’s not normal. I’m glad I don’t have to live in the dorms. I probably would have lost it and killed my roommate by Christmas, but part of the college experience is going to school with a beat-up car and learning to change your own tire on the side of the road and…and…”

“Okay, first of all…normal is boring and uninspired. No true author has ever desired normalcy. Second of all, I’ll give you the whole experience thing…but you can learn to change your own tire in the comfort of your dad’s drive way. Go and get Burt Hummel to teach you to change your own oil. There is never any good reason to force yourself to endure a harder life than you are meant to live. You already know what poverty looks like better than two thirds of your future classmates thanks to the time you’ve spent volunteering at the Family Shelter. Don’t you know that by faking poorer than you really are, you’re making a mockery of the things they are going through every single day?”

Thankfully that finally seemed to get through to her. “I hadn’t thought of it as being inauthentic. I know that none of them want to be there.” she folded like a house of cards. She test drove a couple of Foresters and liked all the different possible packages of the Outback. Finally, she decided upon a twilight blue crystal Outback with a premium power everything package and black interior. It took a while to get all the paperwork done, but with the seven thousand dollars of her trade in, three thousand dollars in incentives and discounts and my putting in a little bit, we were able to get her payments down to two ninety-two a month for forty-eight months. The ride back in the small all weather, SUV-slash-wagon was much more comfortable than it had been in the compact car. “Okay, since you already got me a graduation gift and a birthday gift, this counts as Hanukkah, Christmas, and next year’s birthday presents from you. Okay Bubbie.”

“I’m fine with letting you say that, yes.” I said happily.

When we got back, Nikki and I had to get ready to leave. It was always hard for Nikki to leave her sister and aunts and uncles, but we needed to get home. We had quite a bit to do as the summer ended. But it was all good. I was happy and fulfilled and there was nothing in my life I would change. Though, I couldn’t wait til I could tell the world about my Saulie and Millsey’s impending bundle of joy. And another Daytime Emmy wouldn’t hurt either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas Everyone!!!!!  
> Happy Hanukkah   
> May the New Year bring us a New Prez.  
> May the Sunday after my Birthday bring me lots of comments on my chapter!!!


	18. Six Feet Under (the Weeknd), I Don’t Need Your Rocking Chair (George Jones) & I Want It All (Queen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brantley, Gwen & Saul bring us up to date on their summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her beta reading awesomeness.
> 
> Guest Staring:  
> Darlene Love as Naidean Clayton (Brantley’s Mother)  
> Pat Cleveland as Nee-Nee Nichols (Brantley’s Godmother)  
> Dania Ramirez as Sunni Gonzalez   
> Imani Hakim as Brenda Washington  
> Kevin G. Schmidt as Edward Gentry  
> Jake Abel as Troy Montgomery
> 
> RIP T-Roy...thanks man.  
> (That should tell ya'll how long this chapter has been waiting on posting)

Chapter 17  
Six Feet Under (the Weeknd)  
Brantley PoV

There were times when I couldn’t believe what my life had become. One of those times came over the summer after KAMA left for their first headlining tour. Haja and I made the decision that we would rotate joining them on the road, but we would allow Lamar to establish his place in the pecking order of the tour first. The tour crew needed to know that he was in charge on the road. We did that by keeping to our home base for the east coast dates. We agreed that I’d be the first one to go on the road, but that wouldn’t happen until they headed into the heartland, with a few necessary exceptions. Before the tour hit Middle America and I started to join them for some dates, I had some things I needed to take care of. The first of which was creating a Halloween concert based on our Valentine’s show. When booking the weekend dates for the North American outside the good old US of A parts of the tour, I’d purposely left the Saturday of Halloween open. Given the success of the ‘Lucky in Love’ concert, we kind of had to try it again and see if we could get lightening to strike twice. The fact that Lucious Lyon always held his Halloween event on the Friday night before the holiday, left that Saturday wide open. Besides, Haja, Kurt and Mercedes loved the idea of a masquerade ball. We were going with the theme ‘Scarily in Love’ and it would be fairly different from the original dinner concert.

We were actually holding it at the Javitz Center again. We were familiar with the space and the center’s staff, plus, it was really the only event space that would work. The Center had been so happy with all the publicity they had received in February, they’d jumped at the chance to host us again. The biggest difference was that the night would start with a sit-down dinner concert in the first-floor exhibition halls but after that the masquerade ball would happen up in the rooms we’d had in February. The dinner concert would run pretty much the same as the February concert, though KAMA wouldn’t be performing as long as they had at ‘Lucky in Love’. But the ticket holders would enjoy a comedian, an opening act and then a KAMA concert while they dined. Chef Flynn wasn’t available, so we’d found an amazing chef from Harlem who loved the idea of making sure people knew that food could be sexy. Chef Tiffany Minter was considered one of the most badass female chefs in the city and that made her perfect for a KAMA event to me.

We were all very determined to make ‘Scarily in Love’ just as successful as ‘Lucky in Love’ had been. To such we’d hired Colin Cowie to give Yasmine a hand in getting everything all planned out and ready. Cowie was a Zambian born event planner who came with a recommendation from Oprah. Given the fact that there would be twice as much work, Haja and I decided to also hire a young, fresh out of FIT friend of Kurt’s to give them a hand. Randi Goyl was very energetic. I just knew that I didn’t want to have to do any party planning again. Once, Haja and I had booked the venue and found the chef, I got to offload it all on Yasmine and the event planner we’d found to help her with everything. Well, I did have one last job, I needed to find the comedian who would entertain the diners before they were treated to the vocal stylings of an amazing California born crooner who’d recently become a part of the fam. Andre Harris would be the mid card act before KAMA. We were going with a more traditional mid-card act since Cassidy would be working the two hour masquerade after dinner. I kind of wanted to embrace the whole ‘Black Girl Magic’ vibe that I got from having a Black female chef and Yasmine in charge on our end. So, I put the word out among my contacts that I was looking for a comedienne who would be on the east coast in October, who might like to do a gig at a KAMA event. They had come through with a list of ten or so including some pretty well-known names. Thank God for You-Tube. I was able to watch clips of each of them without having to drag my ass all over the city visiting comedy clubs for weeks on end. I picked out my favorites and then screened some of the best clips for those three calling all of TEAM KAMA present in New York, which happened to be all of us except Hudson, Darcy and Ruth.

I was very careful not to give them any insights into my preference. One by one, first Daniel then Ethan, then Haja and on until was had a unanimous agreement. “Her jokes about her body being like a house and not letting any old body run up in her house was hilarious.” Saul texted in with his vote after he’d viewed the video selections. I contacted Jill Scott’s booking agent who had given me the name, for the comedienne’s booking agent’s contact information. Within five hours after we agreed that Tiffany Haddish was our top pick, she was signed to do a thirty-minute set for just over seventy-five hundred dollars and she got to attend the rest of the event for free. I also made the offer that she could let us know if she’d like to utilize Ruth Mayzer’s styling services for the evening if she’d like. I found her not only funny, but sensible and that was not always a combination found in the same individual. With that last corner piece of the puzzle in place, I could turn things fully over to Yasmine to fill in the details. The next steps would fall to Darcy when she got back, and she already had everything in place that she would need to get that job done and she would just need to tweak the things from February and roll out the ticket sales. But the tickets wouldn’t go on sale until Labor Day at the earliest. I loved how smoothly our machine tended to run.

Every day, I spent at least an hour in the morning an and hour after the show speaking with Lamar, making sure that things were running smoothly. In between, I answered emails for people interested in either KAMA or one of my three other clients. Though three became more by the end of the summer as Daniel brought in Andre Harris who pretty much needed more than just PR help, though he hadn’t realized how little actual support his label was giving him. Within four months of signing him, I’d booked him as an opening act for the Fantasia Barrino, Anthony Hamilton concert tour. It was a twenty-six date tour that would jump off in the following spring. It wasn’t a perfect pairing…but it would get him in front of medium sized audiences who would be predisposed to like him. With his vocals and the fact that he was a young Black man who played several instruments and wrote his own songs, he would win them over and from there I’d be able to book him in bigger and better tours thereafter. In fact within the first three weeks he was my guy, I’d filled his next four months of weekends with paying gigs at higher end Hip-Hop and R&B clubs throughout the five boroughs, Newark and Boston.

I wasn’t just working for my original clients and my newest client that summer. I’d set Max up with a spot on the ‘Boys of Zummer’ tour with Fall Out Boy for the months he wasn’t rolling with KAMA. He would also have his own small venue tour starting that fall. The kid had been acting for years so he wasn’t a total novice and he’d done a Nickelodeon tour a few years before, so he had the touring chops to handle the back to back dates. Since my living expenses were covered by my yearly salary as stipulated in my KAMA contract, I was actually able to offer my prospective clients lower commission rates than most other ‘independent’ booking agents in town. Once he had that knowledge, Max started sending a lot of his old former child star buddies. There were a lot of grown up Nick and Disney kids hopeful to continue a career in the limelight or even just limelight adjacent. I wasn’t able to take on all the people he sent my way. I didn’t really have the contacts to take on those souls who wanted voice over work, though I did keep all their names and what their voices sounded like to me just in case KAMA ever had a need. But I immediately signed all four of the former stars of Big Time Crush. I had them working like crazy within days of them signing their contracts.

Professionally, I was at the top of my game. I was making damn good money with expectations of a hell of a lot more. I’d chosen to await the end of the bulk of the tour to reap my commission, it would make accounting easier for my accountant. It made things easier on me too. I sat down with my mother’s best friend who was also my godmother and a former accountant, who still handled my taxes, to plan out how much I’d end up receiving and how I needed to plan for the future. I wanted to stop renting, so I was going to use part for a down payment. I wanted to live closer to work than I was at the time so I decided to look in Chelsea. I didn’t want to go crazy, but I did want to upgrade my suit game. I wanted an Armani, a Burberry and a custom-made Brooks Brothers in the very worst way. It was things like that that I wanted to make happen. On top of those immediate things, I was so serious about retiring by fifty-five. That meant that my savings game had to be right and tight. Hence why I made sure that seventy percent of all revenue made off my non-primary, secondary sounded like I wasn’t gonna work my ass off for them so even mentally they just weren’t my primary, clients went into my retirement accounts. While my godmother was more of my accountant than Mrs. Abrams, Saul Mayzer was sure as hell my financial advisor and he had my back like whoa. We met quarterly and just within the year I’d been working with him, we already had me a decade closer to my goal.

I had my career. I had my future goals. I had my people. I wasn’t really expecting Yasmine Murray. Me and Yazzy had been dating for a couple of months by the time I had to meet the tour in Nashville. It was actually only my third time heading out with them. I’d popped in at Miami and stayed with them for several days and of course, I’d stuck my nose in for a couple of days after Fort Worth. But Nashville was more serious, I was working the filming of a video and making sure that everything went well for that. That was a major feather in my cap, I got production credits for that shit and that was a definite way to up my cache in the industry, even if the public would never know about it. Yasmine and I didn’t even make love for the first time until a few days after the date I took her on once I got back to NYC from my trip to Nashville. Part of the reason we took thing so slow was because I had not actually asked her out immediately after Valentines, not really. Instead, we’d had a couple of test dates…meeting for coffee on Saturday’s before going our separate ways to run our errands, going out for drinks after work. We took some time to lay the foundation, checking to see if we seriously wanted to risk our almost synergetic professional relationship to see if we could be something more. Besides, I needed to make sure that she was feeling me. I didn’t want to become ‘that guy’. The dude at the office who had to take sexual harassment awareness classes. That was not a good look. Not to mention, I had money on one of the FRTs taking Ruth a little too seriously and her having to be the first of the team to suffer that indignity.

Anyway, Yazzy and I didn’t go on our first real date until shortly before SXSW. It was one of the best dates I’d ever had. Estela was a perfect dinner spot, it was intimate and while it was a little crowded, we could still hear our own conversations and the food was on point. We left there and saw ‘Hamilton’. Real talk, the only reason we were able to get tickets to see that joint was the St. James connection. He was signed with pretty much every member of Team KAMA except Darcy and me. And that was only because he had not needed either of our services yet. He had a job until he didn’t want it anymore and he was still able to manage his own social media accounts. But with Hamilton already buzzed about for the twenty-sixteen Tonys like they were, that shit was destined to change. Everyone thought so too…Ethan already had those contracts ready and waiting for when St. James realized that Darcy was social media magic.

We capped off that night with a visit to my favorite after hours spot and danced until it was basically time to put up or shut up. Since we weren’t trying to fuck shit up by moving too fast, we caught an Uber and I saw her to her door. The kiss she laid on my ass left me feeling confident about a second date. I was right, too. That next weekend, we hit the clubs and made a whole weekend of dancing and chilling and getting to know each other even better. I learned something that weekend that all of our previous conversations had hinted at, but not unveiled. Yasmine may well have been even more goal oriented than I was. She lived her life with one ultimate goal in her mind, and all the smaller goals were just building to that ultimate goal. “I know its corny. I know that. People been making fun of my ass my whole life when I tell them this shit…but I want to be able to retire down to Florida like the white folks on TV.”

“Why that specific goal?” I’d asked before I said anything else.

She shrugged eloquently. “I guess…look, where I grew up there were plenty of old people who had worked their whole lives and still couldn’t leave their block even when they retired. They’d never owned their own homes. They had never even really gone on vacation. They sure as hell couldn’t retire to Boca or Miami like the Golden Girls or Seinfeld’s parents or whatever. So maybe it just seemed like the ultimate sign of success to me to be able to move away when I got old enough that the cold made my bones ache.”

I nodded. “That makes sense to me. I mean, I just want to retire by the time I’m fifty-five and have a vacation home somewhere warm. You just have a more definite idea of where you want your retirement home to be. So, those other things you mentioned, are those rungs on your ladder?”

“Exactly. I want to go on a vacation every other year. I want to live in a place that I’m paying a mortgage on rather than just renting.” She smiled big and bright and broad and stole my breath away. “I want to do all kinds of shit the girls on my block never even think they are gonna get to do.”

“I get it. Trust. I mean, I love the fact that I’ve seen parts of this country that most of the guys I grew up around can’t even spell. They say that they best revenge is living well. I’d say we’re doing that shit.” I said with a grin. “So, dream job?”

She full on laughed. “Well, I know you’re doing yours already. But I want to get into event planning for real. I know that it will be a while before KAMA is really ready for someone on their payroll who just does their parties and events like the dinner concerts…but that’s the dream. Because, I fucking love them, ya know. I want to make their parties and stuff world known, like Diddy’s White Parties, KAMA could do a masquerade ball every year that was not something like we’re currently planning, but a party for other celebrities that make E! or Entertainment Tonight and is just the place to see and be seen…it would be epic.”

“I get it. You want to increase their cache on the more social side of the industry. That’s awesome.” I told her honestly. “And I get the whole loving our bosses. They are pretty damn easy to love. The loyalty they give to their people…”

“I know right. I’m just an AA for you and Haja, but they know my name, they keep track of my birthday. When I got sick in February, Mercedes had their housekeeper make me soup. Who does that shit? How the hell can you not love folks that real.” She sighed. “That was why I was a little leery of getting started with you. I know that you and Mrs. Ruth had a little thing and that she and Ms. Jergens rocked your world one weekend…so you come highly recommended. But I didn’t want to upset our work flow.”

“That same feeling was behind it taking me so long to ask you out on a real date. I didn’t realize that you knew about things with me and Ruth and Deborah.” I admitted.

She laughed merrily. “Boo, you walked around with the hella-goofy smile on your face for DAYS after both of those weekends. When you started to seem like you were maybe into me, I wanted to make sure that you’d come correct if…if we make it to the bedroom.”

After that conversation, we were on like popcorn. We started to date seriously and moved on to exclusivity. Yazzy had her own rules about the men she slept with. She didn’t sleep with anyone who she couldn’t see herself marrying. That was her firmest rule. I could respect that. I had no such rule. I just didn’t take anyone around my mom or godmother until I could see myself marrying them. Yeah, Moms and Nee-Nee hadn’t met any of my previous chicks. When I was waiting on my flight back from Nashville, I found myself unable to shake the thought that it was time for Mom and Nee-Nee to meet my girl. So, I called them up and they were free to have dinner with us that evening. After checking with Yazzy to make sure that she didn’t have any other plans, I told her I wanted to take her, my mother and godmother out to dinner. “Is it weird that I like that this is kind of last minute and I don’t even have the time to freak out today?”

“Naw, it’s cool. I’m pretty much feeling the same way. I just did it before I could talk myself out of it.” I admitted. I got off and made us reservations for dinner at The Cecil. I was able to text all three of the women to let them know the wheres and whens of dinner before I had to put my phone away for takeoff.

Dinner went well. I introduced my mother, Naidean Clayton, and my godmother, Naneshia Nichols, better known to the whole world as Nee-Nee, to my girl, Yasmine Murray. They conversed as we ordered and enjoyed our meal. The food was really good. I was happy to know for sure that Chef Minter would be able to rock the dinner for the Halloween concert. Mom and Nee-Nee had a blast getting to know Yazzy and putting my ass on blast telling all my secrets. They even told her how many Halloweens I went as LL Cool J. A fact that Yasmine found hilarious. They also subtly managed to dig out all Yasmine’s secrets. It was interesting to listen to Yazzy’s thoughts on the current socio-political happenings. It was fascinating to listen to Nee-Nee and Yazzy sharing and discussing tips on building retirement plans on a smaller budget. It was enlightening to listen to Yasmine explain her own tumultuous relationship with her mother and sisters. “I just…I want different things from my life than they want from theirs. I wish that they could understand that I’m not judging their lifestyle just because I refuse to live that way.”

Nee-Nee gave her a side eye. “But are you really not judging it?”

Yazz sighed. “I’ve got eight brothers and sisters, none of them have the same father that I do. None of our fathers are around. Hell, I probably couldn’t pick mine out of a line up. Now my brothers, they took that to mean they needed to make lives with their baby mamas. None of the five of them are married, not in the legal sense, but they have decent jobs and they make good livings and they take care of their kids. They are there for every game, science fair, whatever…I give them credit, all five of them are great dads. My three sisters are all under forty. They have a total of sixteen kids between them. There are five of those nieces and nephews who have the same father, but only two of those have the same mother. I love them all, but do I think that they are smarter and better than the lives they live…yeah. Would I have them change the choices they’ve made…I’ve got twenty-eight amazing reasons that I wouldn’t.”

“Maybe you should tell it to them like that. Then, hopefully, you all will better understand what you’re all thinking and can move past the hurt feelings and defensiveness.” Moms told her with a gentle grin. “Because what you’re saying is that they made choices that you don’t agree with and don’t want for yourself, but you don’t hate them for making them because you love your nephews and nieces. They’ll have to accept that, especially if you throw in that ‘smarter and better’ line.” I know I smirked at her. “What? Flattery is the spoonful of sugar in all familial interactions. It always makes unsolicited advice go down just a little bit smoother.”

The simple truth of the statement was unassailable and we all found it quite hilarious. The rest of dinner went by quickly in a haze of great food and even better conversation. By the end of the evening, I had come to two realizations. One with no help, except maybe a bolt from the blue…and the other was pointed out to my oblivious self by the object of the first revelation. After we saw Moms and Nee-Nee back to Nee-Nee’s Volkswagen for them to make their way back to Yonkers, I rode with Yasmine back to her apartment in the Morris Park section of the Boogie Down Bronx. She’d worn a cute little teal floral romper that was sexy classy and yet still totally meet the family appropriate, but it was getting pretty late and men on the subways in NYC were stupid late at night. Besides, it gave me more time in her company. I almost tripped on air when it hit me on the way from the subway stop to her apartment building. What I felt for her was not only deeper than I’d ever felt for any chick ever, I had fallen completely, totally, irrevocably in love with her. It was that serious. Then just as I was beginning to FREAK the hell out about that illumination of my emotional state of being, Yazzy spoke up and tipped my world off its other axis.

“So have your Mom and Nee-Nee been together your whole life?” She asked as if it were the most obvious thing in the whole world.

“Oh, they have been friends since they were like six or something.” I chuckled I was not being deliberately obtuse. I really did think that was what she was asking.

“They told me that they met in kindergarten, I was just wondering how long they had been together.” Yazz asked the same question all over again. Why did girls do that? They said the same thing like it meant something totally different than it meant. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything until they felt comfortable enough to tell me themselves. But they were just so cute. They act like they’ve been together forever and their love is just so present, so there.”

“Ummm…my mom is straight.” I said carefully. “Not that there is anything wrong with being gay.” I added quickly.

“Shit, I shouldn’t have said anything.” She backpedaled.

“No. I mean, why did you think that they were together…like a couple?” I had always wondered why people who saw them together tended to jump right to that conclusion.

Yazzy gave me a strange look. “Because they act like they’ve been married forever. They are constantly exchanging little, unconscious touches. The way they sat just screamed ‘Yes, she is my person and ain’t she gorgeous’. Their outfits were as complimentary as their orders and Brant, when they shared their food, they ate off each other’s forks.”

I shrugged those off easily. “They have always been like that. They tell the same stories and finish each other’s sentences too. That’s just because they’ve been friends so long that they have the same stories.”

“Okay, Brantley, if you say so.” She let the subject die. “So, after LA, you’re sticking with the tour until they get back, right?”

“Yup. Have you, Brigid, Cleotha and Grant decided which of the tropical weekend dates you’re going to take?” I asked her happy to have something else to talk about.

“It is so awesome that Mercedes, Sam and Noah are letting us go with you guys to the beach venues.” She smiled so big and bright. “Brigid doesn’t have a passport, so we’re letting her have Puerto Rico. Then Cleotha decided to do Mexico since he’s never been there, but he has been to the Caribbean. Grant’s doing Tijuana too…mainly because he’s got family there. Which means that I’ll be going with you guys to Barbados.” She gave me a cheeky grin.

I licked my lip in pure want. “Please tell me that means that I’m going to see you in a bikini.” I begged jokingly.

She gave me a sultry look. “Maybe…if you’re a good boy.” A long slow kiss filled her pause. “I do think that by then we should be able to save the bosses some cash…we won’t need two different rooms, I wouldn’t think.”

“Oh really?” I asked her, my tenor dropping into the sexier tone without conscious though. 

“In fact, now that I’m sure that you’re in this for real…I’m thinking that we were are at a place where we know each other well enough…that when we go out Friday, you could, if you’d like, plan on spending the night. With the odds looking good for the whole weekend.”

“Well, I guess I’ll need to make sure that I’m all packed and have all the necessities.” I joked.

“That’s probably for the best.” She teased back. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Brant, your mom and godmother are really great ladies. And you, sir, are a damn fine son.”

We kissed good night and the rest of the week crawled by. I packed for the weekend and used a Zip Car to pick her up for our date that Friday. I didn’t see the inside of my own apartment again until Sunday evening. Late Sunday evening. I had, long ago, overheard Brittany telling someone that it was better with feelings. Fuck, all if that often-strange white girl wasn’t wise beyond her years. I’d had some of the most intense orgasms of my life the weekend I’d spent with Ruth and Deborah Jergens. But even they paled in comparison to what I felt making love with Yasmine. So much so that I spent every weekend between that one and the time Team KAMA joined our bosses in LA in her apartment and missed the hell out of her during the week when I was alone in my own.

There was only a week of the tour remaining after the VMAs. We hit Portland, Tacoma and Spokane in short order before hauling ass back to the city in time for Sam, Mercedes and Puck to get some rest before their classes started for the fall semester. I’d not known for sure how the summer would go. I never dreamed that it would ultimately prove successful in ways I’d never even dreamed possible. But there wasn’t a single moment of it that I would have changed. I couldn’t wait to learn what the fall would bring.

I Don’t Need Your Rocking Chair (George Jones)  
Gwen Abrams PoV

Among our son Artie’s friends, Roger and I were probably among the oldest. Roger and I were fifty- two and fifty-three respectively. We didn’t volunteer that information and most of the others never seemed to realize that we were a lot closer to retirement than we were just starting out. But we knew it. Financially, we’d planned for both of us to be fully retireed by sixty-seven. By Artie’s senior year of high school, our home was almost completely paid off. It would have been paid off years before, but we’d taken out a second mortgage to make the initial changes to benefit Artie’s needs. The other changes we’d made using our savings rather than taking out further debt, but doing so had pushed our retirement back bit by bit. That was where we stood when Artie started college. We’d saved diligently for his education, but it had always been an unstated truth that if he got into any of the places his intellect almost guaranteed, he’d need to get scholarships to augment those savings. Thankfully, he’d managed to achieve enough grants and scholarships to hold his yearly tuition responsibility down to under five thousand dollars. We were positive that we were entering our son’s college years in great financial shape.

But then things all changed. Rather than living on campus, a lot of the kids decided to go in together and buy a property to live all together. I’d fretted and worried, but Roger had sworn that things would be fine. That it would all work out. Ultimately, we’d had to restructure some things, but Artie’s scholarships had allowed us to move the funds we’d set aside for tuition to pay for his portion of the monthly mortgage. The corporation that the parents had created to facilitate the purchase of the house…it changed all of our entire world. I had needed to hire more than part time seasonal help for years, but because I couldn’t afford to give them health insurance and I didn’t want to hire someone without the ability to give them even partial benefits, I’d never taken that necessary step. By hitching my wagon to Amicitiae Amore, Inc…it not only allowed me to make sure that my son had his dream college experience, it allowed me to grow my business the way I’d always hoped to.

Then another change came about and KAMA, Artie’s little friends’ music group became a sensation. In a matter of hours I went from having used my degree for the same things for almost thirty years, to using parts of what I’d learned that I’d never before needed. I literally went from being a mild mannered CPA to being such a shark of a financial manager that I almost scared myself. But every dollar I added to what those kids made…made me happier than anything I’d ever done before. Now I wasn’t deluded enough to believe that a part of that wasn’t the extra money working with them brought my household. I also knew that part of it was being able to give back to a young lady who’d been a great friend to my son and two young gentlemen who’d grown to be so as well. But the larger part was a sense of professional fulfillment I hadn’t even realized was missing until it was suddenly there. And boy oh boy, if I thought that the changes before that had made my head spin…the resulting changes thereafter made me look like Linda Blair.

By the time we’d reached the first quarter of twenty fifteen, Roger and I no longer had a mortgage and we’d replaced his car. The car had been something that we’d hoped to be able to do once Artie graduated college, but we were determined to make it last with Yeshiva’s grace and Burt Hummel’s talents. Then just when I was thinking, this is nice; I made enough that our financial worries were greatly lessened and Roger and I could retire at sixty-five again; KAMA had a Team KAMA meeting where they gave me a ten percent raise and said that I was being added to the same commission structure as Haja, Brantley, Daniel and Darcy. Though Daniel and Darcy’s commission rates were restricted to promotional material sales, but still, that had to be a great thing for those young people and I could tell that it was completely unexpected. My own commissions would be incumbent on the Amor Verissima and major tour earnings. At the end of the meeting I had received a lump sum of a little over a hundred and forty-one thousand dollars as my commissions from the rental property income of the properties that were purchased, renovated and opened so far that year and the previous one.

When the idea for that nice Jones girl and Noah and their husband Sam…oh, I knew it would never be a legal union, but they supported my son and his wives in their alternative relationship, so I would support Commune’s relationship just as fiercely. Anyway, when they decided to move into real estate and property management, I was ecstatic. I was a bad, High Holiday only Jew, but I was a religious zealot when it came to HGTV’s Income Property. In fact, HGTV was a not-so-guilty pleasure that I shared with Roger. Though we did like different parts of the programing. I enjoyed the buying and selling aspects, the financial, while he preferred watching the renovations and designs. But the thing about it was that in most of the HGTV shows both sides of that coin were highlighted and we were both happy. When a couple could agree on a show to watch it was a great thing…both of us agreeing on an entire channel was almost a marriage miracle. The only other channel we could both consistently watch was the cooking channels and when we tried to share those, our food budget tripled and both Roger and I had gained a ton of weight. Of course, Artie hadn’t gained so much as a pound…stupid teenage boy metabolism. Suffice it to say, we had to stop watching the food centered channels and join a gym for the next two years.

Still, at age fifty-two, I discovered a new talent and that seemed to be quite invigorating. I enjoyed searching for properties and developed my own criteria that I added to those set by Sam, Mercedes, and Noah. We all agreed that the properties should be good investments…I just defined that a bit more rigidly. I tried to ensure that every property they renovated made back at least the cost of the renovations upon the final appraisal. I also worked to make sure that the property would make back the purchase price within five years…sooner was definitely better, but I tried to be realistic. When I was first given the remit, I did not expect to find that I actually had a gift for the work. So much so that soon after we started seeing income from the first properties, Commune gave me a budget and allowed me to populate their property portfolio. I knew that the goal was to make Amor Verissima a nationwide entity rather than just regional. That goal was actually developed based on two differing reasonings. Sam wanted to help as many people as possible by providing young people just starting out and families with safe, affordable housing…and Noah wanted to be a ‘legit real estate mogul’. So I spent an hour or so everyday checking for properties they would probably want to take a look at. I cultivated contacts among reputable tradesmen from coast to coast. I started with people recommended by George Altman as well as companies I found through doing a little research into the service providers of my favorite HGTV shows, then I spiraled out from there. Contractors and subcontractors were a close knit and self-policing bunch. If I had a name and they weren’t worth utilizing, other tradesmen in the area would tattle quickly and suggest someone they knew who was better.

I was casting a pretty wide net, never expecting that the stars would just align, and something would unexpectantly drop into my lap that would turn out to be their biggest money maker to date. The summer had been hectic. I had three junior accountants with their brand-new CPA certification who started at the end of May. It was supposed to be four, but one of the hot prospects who’d come so highly recommended had bombed his exam…twice. So, I’d had to begin the hiring process all over again to fill the fourth slot. It didn’t take as long as I’d dreaded it might. By the third week of June, I had all four slots filled. Edward Gentry and Troy Montgomery had not been stars at UNOH, but according to their major advisor, a friend of mine since before Artie had been born, she assured me that they were exceedingly loyal and some of the hardest workers she’d ever known. I liked that in a person. She did caution that they liked to party harder than most accountants, and not to expect them to be at the top of their game until after noon on a Monday. But as long as they didn’t make mistakes while they were hungover, I was sure we could deal.

Brenda Washington was my friend, Thomas’ favorite. She was a single mother who hadn’t allowed having twins at sixteen keep her from graduating high school at the top of her class. She’d picked UNOH specifically for the small, but not too small town, atmosphere of Lima surrounding it. Even with the cards stacked against her, she was in the top five of her graduating class and didn’t want to leave the home she had made for her boys to find work. I’d snapped her up with a quickness. The last addition had been a girl that Thomas had hesitated to recommend only because she was ‘pretty quiet and really quite strange’. It turned out that she was only strange to anyone who hadn’t known Tina Cohen-Chang for a few years. Johanna Jusang was an Amer-Asian young woman who loved all things Anne Roquelaure especially her witches and vampires novels. I was just happy that she was smart and picked up things quickly enough that she caught up with the others who’d had a couple of weeks of a head start on her. I did have to admit, I’d worried that she wouldn’t be accepted easily by Brenda, Eddie and Troy, but I suppose they’d gotten used to her unique style in their shared classes.

Between Sunni and I we had them all trained up and fully integrated into our freshly opened new workplace and increased workflow just in time for the quarterly corralling of all our small business clients for their quarterly taxes. I was one of only three accounting ‘firms’ in Lima. I wasn’t the oldest one and I was the only female owned one, but I was totally honest and no one had ever had any of their money ‘lost’ only to reappear when the threat of law enforcement was brought into play. Just under half of the small businesses in Lima used my services. It was seriously nice to finally have the help I needed, especially since I’d added Amicitiae Amore, Inc, KAMA and Amor Verissima, LLC to my plate. It was so much more manageable. I’d done better than all right…but for years, I’d prayed that all of my small business clients could have learned to be as diligent and organized as Noah Puckerman had always been.

I knew that many people had wondered why I’d never raised a fuss when Artie had started hanging around with the notorious town man-whore. Even Roger had been more than a little surprised. But the simple truth was that whenever I looked at Noah Puckerman, I didn’t see the slutty teen he had become. I still saw the boy on the very cusp of manhood who had approached me in Temple one Hanukkah apologizing for bothering me but desperate to help his mother financially after her divorce and with a concrete idea how. He’d asked me a million questions about how to start a business and anything and everything associated there with. Looking into those eyes, I saw a beauty that I was sure no one else, outside his mother and little sister, was allowed to see. I made a decision that I have never regretted in the years since. I chose to help him. I did everything I could to help. I helped him with his LLC paperwork. I’d done his taxes for as little as his pride would allow. I did whatever I could to help. And he did what he could to convince the other bullies at McKinley to lay off Artie. He wasn’t always successful, but even Artie notice that the torments were less severe when the mohawked kid was present.

No one had ever been able to convince me that any boy who loved his mother and babied his younger sister that much could ever be all bad. Time had proven me and the adult Berrys correct and about ninety-six percent of the rest of the hypocrites at our Temple, including Hiram and Antwan’s oldest child, very wrong. I was happy to have been correct in my initial assessment of the kid. Besides he was almost accountant level prepared with his paperwork every quarter. I respected that in a person. It was a trait that he had taught to Jake or one they had naturally shared. Puckerman Pool Services quarterly taxes were always the easiest to submit.

Anyway, once Sunni and I had the junior accountants all trained and the taxes for Amicitiae Amore, Inc. and all its subsidiary businesses, including PPS, all completed and filed for the second quarter, I was able to truly focus on finding the next Amor Verissima property venture. Nothing prepared me to have Commune’s most lucrative opportunity, yet, dropped into my lap. It came in the form of an email from Mercedes’ oldest brother. He’d found a way for Mercedes, and her husbands, to make a heck of lot of money while Mercedes was able to get a little, non-harmful, revenge on her mother’s, rather disapproving, family. Best of all, even though I had not yet looked at any apartment properties on that side of Florida, I did have a contact in the area who perfectly fit my needs. Simon Wagner was one of George’s college classmates, a fellow Architecture major who had become a building inspector with a firm down in the Fort Lauderdale area. He’d been happy to take on our job and look over the property for me.

Simon had called me a few days later with his findings. “The repairs needed are not as extensive as I had though would be needed. Your Clients will need to replace the elevators, that’s six guest elevators and two freight. But the bones of the place are rock solid. Plus, bonus, it looks like they upgraded all the glass of the whole building to the best hurricane rated stuff on the market today. It was a smart way to increase the sale-ability of the property. Not that it really needed it; the location alone makes the place worth a small fortune. That’s all the good news. The bad news is that your clients are going to have an extensive interior design project on their hands. Top to bottom, the interior doesn’t look like it’s been updated since the nineties, the early nineties at that. That includes the spa. That being said beach front hotels in Fort Lauderdale tend to be hard to come by…they make money easily and get snatched up quickly. You’ll want to jump on this one as soon as you can.” He emailed me the full report. He’d gone over the place with a fine-tooth comb.

I sent the report and the income prospectus to the trio and Saul and the ball was rolling. Within a month of the initial email from Devon Jones, we had an offer accepted on the purchase of the property. George’s classmate was a valuable resource. He knew all the area tradesmen that should be avoided at all cost, including the elevator installation company that had been recommended by the sellers. Even with the built-in contingencies, the Reliqua Hotel would be ready to open by the following summer. It seemed as if just when that project was underway, my personal world was cast off its axis. Not long after KAMA’s Ohio concerts, Roger and I received an offer for our house that would have given us a net profit of over a hundred thousand over our original purchase price and the cost of all the accessibility upgrades we’d made over the course of our ownership. We talked everything through and there was just no reason not to take the offer.

So, we decided to start the process of downsizing. We stored all of Artie’s things in what would become his editing bay at his and his wives new house and, after talking with George about how long it would be until the second stage of their residential development would be available, we found a nice comfortable condo closer to the new build and purchased a cute little three-bedroom unit. We did a quick close on the condo and a full ninety day close on our home so that gave us time to move what we wanted to move and buy what we didn’t. We sold our huge family furniture and downsized everything but our king-sized bed. Neither of us were willing to do away with the comfort of the huge bed, especially since we’d made a very real reconnection in our lovemaking. However, I let Roger make all the changes he wanted to the décor. He had a blast. I’d always made a conscious effort to avoid the super floral bedding and things like that in our shared spaces, in deference to his masculinity, but I had never realized how modern an aesthetic he actually liked until he was able to decorate to his heart’s content.

It was an interesting experience. I handled all the traditional ‘male responsibilities’ finding the best financing, the best…and least expensive…movers, the best contractor…okay that one was easy. We couldn’t not use George Altman. That would have been wrong. Still, I took on all the things that Roger had had to force himself to do all those years ago while I had beenforcing myself to care about paint colors and such. That go around we each knew our lane. It may not have been traditional but we were way too old to have to hold to some stupid tradition that didn’t work for us or made us miserable. With the redistribution of tasks, the move seemed to go much more smoothly and easily. By the time KAMA was wrapping up the continuous US leg of their tour, Roger and I had sold everything we didn’t want to move and were settled in our new, smaller, home.

Time had gone by and I was older. Things in my life had certainly changed. But that one summer proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I might not qualify as a cougar or whatever…but I was still in my intellectual prime and I was no where near ready for retirement.

 

I Want It All (Queen)  
Saul Mayzer PoV

My least favorite sentiment shared by Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the idea that if you want to make ‘insert your favorite deity’s name here’ laugh…tell Him/Her your plans. And yet it seemed to be a truth that I could not escape. I’d been a planner my entire life. It was just a part of who I was. I had two-year plans, I had five-year plans. I had ten-year plans. Now, I wasn’t crazy rigid. When the plan needed to be changed or I needed to manipulate things to make what I wanted to happen, happen, I was good with rolling with the punches and putting my thumb on the scale. Turned out though, so was God. My Mills and I had plans. God decided that they were funny. Those were the thoughts going through my head on a late May afternoon as I sat with my wife in her obstetrician’s office.

We’d stopped using condoms within six months of getting married. Instead we relied on Mills quarterly birth control shot. No birth control was foolproof, but having gotten through two years of marriage, without a single mishap, I suppose I’d assumed that we were good to go or whatever. However, that month when Mills had gone in for her next shot, she’d been shocked to find out that she couldn’t get it…because she was already pregnant. I don’t know which of us were more surprised. I cleared my schedule for the afternoon and managed to make it cross town to the doctor’s office within the hour. Mills was waiting for me in the waiting room. “Thank God you were able to get here. I am freaking out.” She admitted giving me a tight hug. “Did you have any trouble getting away?”

I shook my head. “Between KAMA’s four huge investment accounts, their money market accounts, Castle’s investment accounts and his money market account, the Amicitiae Amore money market accounts, and all the small, KAMA adjacent people’s investment accounts, I’ve made more money for Barclays America in the last two quarters than my next three closest competitors combined. That isn’t even including the new people I’m currently courting away from their West Coast and therefore lesser financial planners. Trust me, leaving unexpectantly early one day…they aren’t going to care.” I assured her.

When we were showed back to meet with Dr. Benedetto, it quickly became apparent that there was a real reason for my wife’s shock and surprise. And a reason that she’d found one of the best ObGyn practices in the nation to see to her feminine medical needs. Though she had never shared her fears, Mills had always assumed that she’d inherited her parents’ fertility issues. When she discussed it with her doctor she soon understood that her mother’s tendency to miscarry early in her pregnancies had led to the fact that she’d only carried two children to term. That fact and the fact that her mother’s second child to reach full term, another girl they had planned to name Jennifer, had been stillborn could been something genetic or it may well have been something unique to Mills mom, something entirely environmental, doctor error or even just one of life’s unexplainable tragedies. “However, given that you remember your mother having several miscarriages, I will be monitoring you as closely as I do my high-risk patients. That is to say, I am assuming that you are happy about this?”

“Deliriously.” Mills whispered as if she was still scared that the shiny, happy news and the life it would bring would be taken from her before she was even able to really wrap her mind around it.

In a single moment, I did a complete one-eighty from thinking of all the ways the news went against our, okay, my plans to knowing that I would do every single thing in my power to ensure that our fetus became an infant and the blessing that Mills already saw him or her as…hopefully him, Sloane was really very outnumbered. “Our child was made in love and will be born into love.” Lord willing. “What do we need to make sure that that happens, Doctor?”

So, she ran us down a list of ways to destress Mills life and foods to avoid. All of the suggestions were about creating a positive restful environment for Mills during her pregnancy. But Dr. Benedetto also gave her a list of myths about miscarriage and loss. I’m not sure which list made Mills feel better, but I know that within hours of leaving the doctor’s office, we’d read them both, thoroughly.

Mills and I had immediately returned to our home on Long Island. Usually we ended a long day with a glass of scotch for me, a glass of red wine for Mills and a long soak in the jacuzzi in our master bath. That day was the start of a new ritual. According to the pamphlets the doctor’s nurse had given us before we left, super-hot soaks were out as was alcohol. So, instead we took a long, hot shower together, donned clothing so comfortable it had taken us months into our marriage to feel comfortable wearing around each other and we lounged around our shared office with a big glass of two percent milk for each of us. If those glasses happened to be brandy snifters, well, it was a nod to who we’d been that morning before our world changed. We were cuddled up in the large, micro-suede chair and a half near the reading area talking through how we felt about the news of the day. Of course, Mills asked me how I felt about everything. “I’m so happy…I haven’t been this happy since I tricked you into marrying me.”

She gave me her beautiful side eye. “Boy, please, I just let you think you were tricking me into marrying you. It was just my way of getting you to the altar.” She teased, even though we both knew the truth. If it had been up to Mills, we’d have just started seriously, exclusively dating. Okay, that was something of an exaggeration…but she’d admitted that her preference in relationship speed had been glacial before she met me. “I know it’s early…but what do you want, a boy or a girl?”

I kissed the top of her gorgeous head. “While we were sitting in the doctor’s office, I was thinking that we needed to have a boy just to give Sloane a male playmate. But now, I just want the baby to be healthy.” I finally answered in the complete honesty I knew she needed from me in that moment. 

“I don’t think I want to tell our family…not until we get past the first trimester.” Mills whispered to me almost begging me to accept that decision.

“Okay, then we’ll wait and tell the family later once you’re ready.”

So that was what we did. The next several weeks were filled with, well to be honest, they were filled with vomit. So much so that Mills was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum. Thankfully, ginger gum, tea and candy seemed to help her get that under control. But there was no helping her mood swings. They were pretty fierce. I managed to avoid them through the age-old practice of distracting her with kisses, hugs and sex. But I was the only one who had those tools available to them, so I was the only one who could manage that feat I kind of felt bad for almost everyone else. Almost everyone. I didn’t feel bad for Francesca. She deserved ever single tirade she got as far as I was concerned. That broad took the term ‘bridezilla’ two steps too far. Neil wasn’t even trying to reign her in either. She spent over twelve grand on her wedding dress…just the dress. The amounts she then spent on lingerie, shoes…and everything else was just as extravagant. Of course, Neil didn’t care. His bosses were all being invited to the lavish wedding and he was very happy to show off for them. Though, according to him, it was that or buy a big ass house with way more upkeep than he wanted to do and have them over for dinner parties to get ahead. “Sick as it is, Cuz, just because I’m the best cardio-thoracic surgeon in the state, unless I save a president or senator, they don’t care…but if their wives think that I’m hot shit and that Francesca looks like the most beautiful bride outside of a magazine and that our wedding should be in the society pages…that will make them actually remember my name. This is the game I have to play to advance in my field. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.”

“Shit, you’ve gotta play politics in healthcare…that is sick.” I groaned. But that was as far as my pity went for him. His fiancée was even more annoying than she was during the two years I spent avoiding her like the plague. At least Mills was in love with the bridesmaids’ dress Francesca had chosen.

Professionally, things were even better by the end of June than they had been even a month earlier. Despite my promotion to Managing Director of the International Investment, earlier that year, I still had my responsibilities to my personal clients. I just got to pick who those clients were. I’d kept some and off-loaded the rest to my team for management. Since my promotion, I had gained the single largest lottery annuity Barclays had ever been chosen to manage. I gained several other larger entertainment based accounts. But even beyond those, I managed to get some very old money away from Bank of America and Wells Fargo and into Barclays in the form of three vieux riche families with close ties to the Fabrays. It would seem that while Russell Fabray wasn’t stupid enough to think that I’d forgiven him for the actions of his daughter…Noah and Mercedes hadn’t broken any confidences, but they’d assured me it was more his fault than Quinn’s…he was smart enough to play on his tenuous connection to me. I wasn’t trying to boast, it was simply a fact that I was a seriously boss name in financial planning and wealth management. It wasn’t that my name was well known outside of certain circles…just that inside those circles, I had definitely made a name for myself. I’d only gotten more notice since reports of KAMA’s initial earnings having been doubled in the eighteen months since they broke on the scene. With the information they received from Russell Fabray, erroneous as it may have been, that I was already handling old money, it made it acceptable for them to put portions of their vast fortunes into my hands. I was determined to make them even wealthier. There was a principal involved.

Those three accounts were unexpected boons, but they certainly made the time I took off to be with Mills during the worst of her morning sickness a moot point. In fact, it got me double the usual paternity leave and one hell of a bonus at the end of the quarter…and that wasn’t counting all the commission that I earned just for doing what I loved. I had started my career as a certified financial planner. From there I’d gotten my Charter Financial Analyst credentials. I had worked as a financial planner, a stock broker, and a wealth planner. My current job title meant a ton more supervision than I’d ever had to do before. Yes, I was only responsible for the accounts that I wanted to personally handle, but I was also responsible for a team of executive wealth planners and each of them had a team of financial planners under them. I’d been able to select my own team and that allowed me to help people I thought had what it took to take my job when I was ready to strike out on my own. They also allowed me the freedom to work as I needed to work.

Of course, it wasn’t all honey and roses. I worked my ass off on each of my accounts. Especially my most important accounts. There was a whole series of things that I did daily and weekly for my clients. One of the first things I did every Monday morning that summer was to check the weekend returns from the KAMA Swag Van and move the money accordingly. It was amazing to me how quickly Tessa and her boyfriend reached the deposit limit of two hundred and fifty thousand on the KAMA Swag Chase account. I would reconcile the figures with Darcy’s numbers in the database she’d established to allow herself, Gwen and I to manage the tour merch sales more effectively. Granted, Darcy also used it to track the inventory logs for the Swag Van and to manage inventory delivery to the other vendors…but I left those aspects of the database to her.

Once I’d done that, I checked my own database that tracked stocks I was researching for the twelve major accounts and seventy-five other level accounts that I managed. Each of them had a different stock portfolio and savings system and array based on the needs and wants of the account owners. KAMA, Sam, Mercedes and Noah were four different accounts. They, along with Richard Castle were my largest accounts, though the amounts the McIntoshes, the Griswalds and the Cabbots had moved into my care put my two newest accounts in a very close third place. I made sure that each of the accounts I managed was producing and looked into ways to gain them a higher return on their investments. I spent three hours every morning cataloging and managing my accounts. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we had an hour-long team meeting where we traded information and I was able to help the members of my team learn to be better at risk analysis and spreading investments over a broader stroke. Things they, in turn, taught to their teams. So many planners assumed that the markets were the best way to grow wealth, and they were a good way, but the best portfolio was a diverse portfolio.

Ultimately, I had my team looking into the US, European and Asian markets, tech stocks as well as more conservative, more traditional bonds. We researched rebalancing timelines and strategies. There were really three parts to what we did. For each account we had to design a tailored investment plan, invest at an appropriate risk level for the client…older clients needed more security. The older the client was, the less likely it was that they would have time to rebuild or wait on a natural rebound if something went awry. Then we had to manage everything for all the accounts. That was probably the most involved part of things. Within the management of the accounts we were monitoring, we were constantly rebalancing the portfolio to handle shifts of the markets, managing the taxes…which was an entire pain in the ass and I was so glad that for the four KAMA accounts, I just sent those numbers over to Gwen…and finally, once a year, we refreshed the whole thing, ridding ourselves of whatever was underperforming or not living up to projections…and probably never would. I enjoyed my career and would not change it for the world…well…I was still looking forward to starting my own firm.

The original plan was that we’d wait on kids until I had my firm established. But it seemed as if that was going to have to wait. I rebalanced my personal plan to wait on my firm until after Mills and I had our two point three kids and they were ready to start pre-school. That would let me establish their college funds and have those fully funded before I indulged in some serious risk of my own. It was especially important that I have the flexibility of schedule that I had at Barclays while Mills was pregnant or while our kids were young. The plan had been to get to that point of business ownership where I’d have some flexibility before we reached that point we were dealing with munchkins and late nights and all that shit. It wasn’t necessarily something that had to be rushed. My base salary was just a little less than three-hundred thousand a year and that didn’t even include the commissions and bonuses I earned for the accounts I was still in charge of managing. So, I was, as Sander liked to say, ‘happy as a tick on a fat hound dog’. There was no part of our coming child that I would vote to change. Not even being unable to tell anyone until Mills was comfortable sharing our joy diminished the happiness I felt. At first, it felt really nice to hold such a precious secret between the two of us.

I was pretty sure that Mills had gone to Mom for advice. If anyone could understand her plight, it was Ruth Howard Mayzer. Mom had suffered from infertility and had a couple of miscarriages her self over the course of her and Dad making a family together. I remember her once telling me that they had almost given up and started looking into adoption. It seemed as if talking to Mom really helped Mills to allow herself to look forward to the baby…to accept that it was a possibility that the pregnancy would go to term and we would have our child. But the thing that helped to most was a slightly unexpected trip we took to Chicago. We took Nikki to join her parents for a trip to an amusement park with them and their friends and her little sister. Beth was a total sweetheart. She and Nikki were probably the most spoiled but not in a bad way little kids ever. They were very much beloved. Being there in that park with Mills avoiding the coasters tipped Shelby in on our secret quick, fast and in a hurry. Thankfully, that meant Mills was able to talk with Shelby about their shared experience as high-risk pregnancies. That day, it gave Mills an entirely different outlook on things. To be honest, being able to talk with David about the weird place where we lived of being encouraging and hopeful and keeping up our wives’ spirits while trying not to get too hopped up or down ourselves was a crazy balancing act. I hadn’t realized how much I needed someone to talk to until that day. The four of us kept talking even after they were back in Lima and we were back in New York.

Dr. Benedetto had wanted to wait for three months from Mills positive test to do the transvaginal ultrasound that would allow her to determine due date and therefore, exactly how far along our little munchkin was. That landmark appointment was our sixth in just three months. I’d been at each and every one with her. That day was no different. After the usual lab work, weight checks, etc., we started by talking about her symptomology. “I’ve finally gone three days in a row without throwing up.” She told the doctor happily. “The mood swings are still pretty ridiculous. I’m still needing naps in the afternoon…oh and the Wolverine senses thing…still so in play. But overall, I feel…I don’t think better is the right word…because the nausea is less intense, but still, unfortunately, present and so is the fatigue, but I guess better is the only word that fits.”

“Well, we were hoping that as you moved into the second trimester the symptoms would lessen somewhat. With the hyperemesis gravidarum, you may well experience nausea and vomiting throughout the pregnancy. Is the ginger and mint still helping at least somewhat?”

Mills nodded. “Yes, they help a lot. If I throw up now, it’s usually in the early morning before I have a chance to drink any tea or chew any gum.”

Dr. Benedetto made some notes on her chart. Then we were escorted to the ultrasound lab. When the doctor came in they probed Mills, which I admittedly found really humorous, and the Doctor gave us a pretty big smile. “Mills, if you want to shout to the world you’re pregnant…do so. You are at nineteen weeks not the fourteen or fifteen we’d assumed. You are well into the second trimester, and to be honest, I think the slightly above average width of your hips is the only reason you’re not in maternity wear.”

Mills chuckled. “I did have to stop wearing my jeans and button pants a few weeks ago. But I have enough slacks that are just the business version of yoga pants, I didn’t get too concerned.”

I smirked. “I noticed that her belly was firm and had started pooching out a little bit about a month ago, but I’m down there talking to the baby a few times a day.” And teasing her to a couple of orgasms a few other times a day. Pregnancy had made my already beautiful wife even more gorgeous to me. Her breasts had gotten so much larger that she’d had to buy all new bras and shirts, but that change had actually started before she’d even realized that she was pregnant. Still, that change had brought about some serious fun times for the both of us.

Doctor Benedetto looked as if she knew exactly what I wasn’t saying. But she kept everything very professional, adjusting the probe and making clicks with the mouse that signaled screenshots. “Well, your baby is cooperating…would you like to know the gender?”

I looked at Mills who was nodding emphatically. “The Sisters,” she utilized the shorthand group name we’d coined for Becah, Danica and Gabby, “are ready to kill Shelby for not finding out. I’m not telling them I’m pregnant and kept it from them for almost five months and not telling them if it’s a girl or a boy.”

“Daddy, do you want a girl or a boy?” the Doctor smiled.

“First, is the baby healthy?” Both the doctor and the nurse in the room nodded. They pointed out the heartbeat and the head and how the fetus was actually baby shaped already…just smaller…and everything. “Then, I’m hoping for a boy…not out of misogyny or fear of teenage girls…just one of my sisters has twin daughters that will be three a few months after this baby comes and the other has a little boy who will be two this December and Dani’s brother has a little girl who will be two in January…Sloane…that’s our nephew…he’d be ridiculously out numbered if this baby is a girl too.” I said almost quickly enough to be a babble…it wasn’t…but close. I was so damn happy I just didn’t care.

“Well, Sloane will have some backup next January. It is a boy and the size and development put your due date on or around MLK day.”

Mills and I shared a smile. That was just perfect. Twenty-thirteen had brought us together. Twenty-fourteen had been the year of our first anniversary, our wedding and our new home, thankfully in one of the best school districts in the entire country. Twenty-fifteen had brought us financial and emotional joy and with the new year, we’d, Lord willing, be welcoming our new baby. I was right that was the best summer of my life and I could not wait for what the winter would bring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Chapter is dedicated to SnowDove30   
> Thank you for nudging me. I didn't realize that I'd gotten so wrapped up in the rest of the story that I hadn't posted this chapter yet.   
> I can tell you all that there are a total of 25 chapters to this work and I'm currently working on chapter 21.   
> Real Life is definitely sucktacular right now so, to be honest, losing myself in the universe is probably saving my sanity. Unfortunately, for me that means writing and creating...not editing and posting. I'm sorry. But I so need the release right now, so please forgive me.  
> Hopefully you'll all like this chapter and let me know it.   
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	19. With Arms Wide Open (Creed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vince's Summer is Filled with Surprises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her beta reading awesomeness!
> 
> Guest Staring:  
> Alisha Boe as Therese Carter  
> Moses Gunn as Clarence Carter, Sr.  
> Alexandra Maria Lara as Christine Carter  
> Jordan Fisher as Clarence ‘CJ’ Carter Jr.

Chapter 18  
With Arms Wide Open (Creed)  
Vince PoV

I could never have guessed how much the decision to accept the scholarship offer from Ohio State was going to change my life. I had just wanted to get the hell up out of Dillon, Texas. Columbus Ohio was offer that was both the strongest and the farthest away from my home town…so that was where I went. It also had the distinction of being the school of the few I got into that had the most number of players drafted into the NFL. That was pretty important to me. At the time I desperately wanted to go into the NFL and make some serious money. That was the dream. I’d grown up enough to know that I’d originally had that dream to be able to rub in the faces of all those fuckers in Dillon that said that a con and druggie’s kid couldn’t be shit else bit a con or a druggie or both. But I’d grown up some and now the dream hadn’t really changed, but it was primarily about making a future for myself, not just flicking off those in my past. I finished my sophomore year off with a lower A average and Coach Meyer wanted me to start as the left cornerback, but also fill the second quarterback position too. I learned that Karofsky was going to be starting left tackle. He was only six-two, but he was a wall of muscle all by him damn self. Having him protecting me when I played QB, that made me feel secure.

When we got back to Lima, we quickly settled into a schedule. We were up with the sun, running and working out. The principal of their old high school was good enough to let us workout in the high school gym and Finn’s old football coach helped us and especially Elle with our conditioning. Coach Beiste was the only female football coach I’d ever met, and she knew her shit. She worked with me and, to some extent, Finn while her boyfriend…an Olympic weightlifter…became something of a mentor for Elle. We were able to work out almost every single day to help Lauren get her self down to weight she had to get down to in order to be able to compete in the Olympics trials. But everybody I knew had a job. Lauren was working IT. Finn was working for Burt…and so was I. Granted, I split my time between Laura’s shop and Burt’s but between the two places I got a full-time check. I wasn’t certified, so I was just listed as an oil change tech in both shops, but that was still worth twelve bucks an hour…so I was happy.

Just a few weeks after we got back to Lima, Ben an Laura took me and Elle out to dinner. They wanted to talk to us about something major. I was shocked when they drove us to a nice restaurant in Columbus and we were joined by my sister, Ornetta. I was glad to see her. She and I had dinner together when we could during the school year, but she was working and taking two different loads at the beauty school she was attending. She’d finished the esthetics program, right around the time I was taking my exams, but she was only half way through the cosmetology program. She would finish that program in December. She worked really hard and was happier than I could ever remember. Over dinner she told us that Veronica was going to apprentice her, but first she was going to have to do another six months of training on natural hair. “But Veronica is so nice. She said that if I sign a contract to work in her salon for two years after my apprenticeship is over, she’ll pay for half the tuition at the Black beauty school.” she said excitedly. “Bet none of you can guess what the name of the beauty school I have to go to for the natural hair training?”

I laughed. “What is it?”

“It’s called the New Direction School of Beauty.” She told us all.

Lauren laughed hard. “Well, hell, the words New Direction have changed the lives of everyone at this table, one way or another…might as well change yours too.”

“That’s exactly what I thought.” Netta laughed. Those two had gotten a little too close for my comfort over the school year. In fact, Elle probably saw Netta more than I did.

“Netta, I’m so glad that you’re doing so well. When you’re ready to move to Lima, I’m telling you now you will stay with us until you finish your apprenticeship. We aren’t going to take no for an answer, so don’t even try it.” Ben told her with a big grin.

Netta chuckled. “I wasn’t going to try. I know the deal. You make it look like its all out the kindness of your heart, but really, you just want somebody there who can help you cook.” She teased back.

“There might be a little bit of truth about that.” Ben shot back.

Laura shook her head. Something made me realize that she’d been in Lamar’s chair fairly recently. When we got home her hair was really dark…but that night it was more of a honey or caramel color. I complimented her on the change and she smiled brightly. “Thank you, Vince, Ben still hasn’t noticed.”

“Oh, I noticed.” He said and then whispered something in her ear that made her blush so hard the rest of us were glad we didn’t have to hear it.

Elle looked a little green. “Alright…save that stuff for the privacy of your bedroom. What’s the deal with the fine dining establishment?”

“Well, we wanted to talk with the three of you about something pretty major.” Laura started with a smile. “Vincent, we’d like to adopt you…I mean, legally, we’ve already done so in every other way.”

“But I’m grown.” I said confusedly. “How can you adopt me?”

“Well, we talked with Antwan…we’d like to get you on the good insurance that Lauren has…just in case something goes wrong on the field. But we won’t be able to unless you are legally ours like you are spiritually. There are some pretty strict guidelines involved, we have to be older than you, have to exhibit a paternal type relationship towards you…things like that. But Antwan says that we already meet all the qualifications. All we need is your permission to get the ball rolling.”

“But what about Netta?” I blurted. She and I were all each other had before the Zizes and the Hudson-Hummels, I didn’t want to leave her feeling deserted or abandoned.

Ben shook his head. “Antwan said we didn’t make the same thresholds for her. But once you’re legally ours the court would be more inclined to see a parental relationship between us and her also.”

“Especially if she is living with us during her apprenticeship.” Laura added.

Netta laughed. “So, I was right, you do have an ulterior motive…I just had the wrong one.”

“But why?” I asked them desperately. They were already my medical guardians and all my real, important mail went to their address.

“Because we love you, you idiot.” Elle said happily. “You should definitely do it. Say yes. You’re already ours. Putting it down on paper just means that legally, you’re a Zizes.”

I thought about it some more. Laura reached across the table. “Vince, I have a sister, Ben wasn’t an only child either. We’d meant to have more children after Lauren, but it just wasn’t in the cards. She was a huge baby and I had gestational diabetes and every other problem you can have when a baby is born over ten pounds. I tore like you wouldn’t believe. I truly believe that if either of us were any less stubborn, neither of us would have survived that birth. Then my doctor said that the chances were good any subsequent pregnancies would probably produce babies who would be even bigger. I wasn’t risking another birth like that. So, we didn’t. but low and behold eighteen years later Lauren brought us to you and you brought us to Netta.”

Ben continued for her. “We couldn’t have more kids and no offense, but your parents they didn’t deserve to have you. Your mother, maybe, but I agree with you, Vince. I wouldn’t piss on your father if he was on fire.”

I looked over at Netta and knew from the look on her face that she wanted me to say yes so badly. I wasn’t sure she wanted me to say yes for me or for both of us…but she definitely wanted me to say yes. Elle had already made her feelings clear. So, too, had Laura and Ben. “Will I need to change my name? because Elle is always at the end of the alphabet.”

“You can hyphenate.” Ben assured me.

All three of the women at the table with us were looking like they were hoping hard as hell that I was saying yes, without looking like they were hoping I was saying yes. I couldn’t let them down. Not when I wanted to say yes so badly anyway. “Yes…I…” I don’t know why my voice was cracking and my throat was closing. I cleared it and tried again. “Yeah, I’d like to be yours officially.”

We may have been a fine dining establishment, but that didn’t matter much to the five of us. Laura and Lauren had me crushed between them in a huge hug quickly. Netta and Ben joined soon enough. It was so moving. I was touched that they were that happy that I’d said yes. “Thank God you said yes.” Ben told me with a wicked grin. “I’ve been to nervous to eat all day.” I believed him when he gave our waiter his order. The food was incredible. We talked more about what adoption would actually entail. We grilled Netta on her job and how she was actually liking Columbus. We teased Elle about her weight loss. They teased me about increasing my sprint time. “Okay, so if the whole football thing doesn’t work out…are you gonna give Usain Bolt a run for his money?” 

I shot him a dirty look and enjoyed my jumbo lump crab cakes. “See, and I was going to name my first-born son Benjamin.” I shook my head sadly. The laughter we all shared felt like family. The only thing I asked was that we kept it between us and Attorney Berry until everything was settled. The next couple of weeks flew by. We had to go before the probate judge twice. He interviewed Elle too. It wasn’t too horrible. The court went through the Zizes’ financials since they day we met to determine the provision of emotional and financial support, food, shelter, discipline, guidance, education, religious training, medical care and love and affection. That was a direct quote from the letter from the court. Even with the court dates, I was still able to have fun when time came for it. We celebrated Father’s Day, getting Ben some awesome gifts. Netta and I went in together and got him a new, black leather, messenger bag that he could take back and forth to his office since he no longer worked from home. She and I made sure he didn’t have to cook all day. Then a few weeks later, everyone was gathered for the Jones Fourth of July shindig. I ate entirely too much. But thankfully, the workouts were not suspended that Monday.

After we finished our training that morning, everyone checked in on Unique. I’d been calling and texting her since she got home from the hospital. Just making sure that she knew that it was a struggle, but it would be okay. Not that I knew…but from what I read online that was the truth. I was pretty sure that most people had assumed that a brother from Texas would have had trouble with U because she was different. But me and Netta both knew better. We’d had a neighbor who was born female but lived her life as a man. He’d helped Momma out a lot when we were little…keeping the heat on, keeping the water on. He hadn’t wanted anything in return either. He just helped just because Momma had kids. But he was different and Texans don’t like different. Someone told his secret. The ‘good men’ of Dillon raped Mr. Hank to death…because how dare he be different. I was too little back then to do anything. I still remember they dragged Mr. Hank from his home. When Momma tried to help, Mr. Hank told her to go back inside and take care of her kids and to tell us he loved us. I was pretty sure the first time Momma tried crank was the day the story of Mr. Hank’s body being found dumped outside of town hit the papers. Yeah…Naw, I wasn’t a six-year-old kid anymore. Anybody trying to come for Unique was gonna have to go through me.

Time flew by that summer. Before I knew it, Elle’s birthday had come and gone. Then she and Finn were officially engaged. That was awesome. Elle went to Columbus with Unique for her freshman orientation and technically to check out our new digs for next semester. When she got back, the raves for our half of the duplex kind of made me wish I’d been able to go too. But I hadn’t wanted to miss a full day of work. Not when both Finn and I were both taking that Monday off from Burt’s and I was off from Laura’s that Tuesday for the big trip to Chicago. That whole trip turned out to be a blast and a half. I should have been shocked to find out that Cedes and her people cyber stalked my dates. But I wasn’t. I knew Black women. Nosiness and protectiveness were two qualities all of them possessed. It was hilarious how mad everyone got at the chick for being bad in bed. And, I never thought that I would get to see a concert from the stage like that. I wasn’t as close to Quinn as I was to James, but I was happy as hell for her. James had everything he wanted for the moment. I tried not to feel jealous, but…

The next day when we got back, I had a full day at Burt’s first shop. I’d pretty much given up hope on finding someone that I connected with as much as I had with Sasha. She and I were still great friends…but it was hard rolling with the crew I hung out with being single as shit. And I knew it wouldn’t really be any better when we got back to school since I’d be living with two and half couples full time. I said half because Ryder and Unique might not be actually knockin’ da boots, but Ryder and I talked enough during the morning workouts to know that that shit would be changing quick fast and in a hurry once Unique’s new vagina was cleared for sex by her doctors. I wasn’t jealous of their happiness, or Elle and Finn’s or Karofsky and LaKeith’s I just wanted some of that for myself. I had just gotten to a point where I didn’t think it would happen for me.

That day was just like any of the other days I worked at Burt’s shop. Burt had a uniform for all his crew, charcoal gray Dickies FLEX, relaxed fit, twill work shirt with the Hummel & Sons logo on the left pocket and our name on the right. The shirts were paired with a pair of navy blue FLEX, straight leg, loose fit work pants. Burt was such a traditionalist that the uniform for his international shop was they exact same, just with the colors reversed. He also had coveralls with the logo on the back and our names on the front above our heart as part of the uniform, but as I understood those were mostly for the full-timers in the winter. I wouldn’t get a set of those until-slash-unless I worked for him over Christmas break. Burt was nice enough to provide us with our first set of uniform pieces, but we had to buy our own extras and our own steel toe boots. Laura had gotten the info from Burt and brought me three sets even though I only worked over there three days a week. Ben had forced me to let him buy me a pair of KEEN Utility Men's Pittsburgh steel toe work boots. I was planning on buying them myself. But just didn’t have the money that early in the summer. Ben said he would get them and I could pay him back. Yet somehow, every time I paid him anything back on the boots, the money miraculously reappeared in my bank account. 

I worked at Laura’s shop two days a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays, and then I worked at Burt’s shop Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. That gave me Thursdays and Sundays to myself. It wasn’t a bad schedule. I had all my summer home work done before May turned into June and I was in such good physical condition that I just knew the coaches would be happy. But the best part was that my Burt days didn’t start until twelve thirty. I got there, and my first three hours were spent on the front desk doing intake. That afternoon, the first one back after our trip to Chicago, I was there maybe thirty-minutes when the cutest little honey came in with her father. Shorty was a little taller than Sasha…but that wasn’t hard to manage. She was light enough that I was guessing her momma was hella-white considering that her daddy made Dr. Benton look high-yella. She also had mixed girl hair, long and curly and deep, dark brown rather than chestnut. But her mouth, eyes and nose all told of the Black half of her DNA. She and her father came forward. He did all the talking. “Would anyone have the time to go over a used car? We’re thinking of buying it and want to make sure that it is safe for my daughter.”

I looked through Burt’s schedule. He preferred to do those kinds of jobs himself. The only other person he trusted to be as thorough as he would be was his second in command…but Darryl was over at the other shop that afternoon. “Burt is at lunch right now, but he should be back in a couple of minutes. He doesn’t have anything on the schedule until two. He can probably go over it for you. But it won’t be quick. Both of his sons are in college, he takes this kind of check up seriously.”

“That’s what I want to hear. Therese is transferring to Ohio State for her junior year. She didn’t need a car when she lived with her mom, but things are different here in Ohio.” He nodded.

“Oh, that’s cool, I’ll be a junior next semester too.”

He looked at me searchingly. “Wait, you’re that Howard kid…running and cornerback. The talk was that you’ll hit the draft after this season.”

“Yes, sir. I’m Vince Howard. But no sir…the draft is the dream but it’s going to have to wait until I get my degree.” I told him honestly.

He nodded. “That’s smart. Make sure that you have something to fall back on if you blow out a knee or something.”

“Can I get your information to log you into the system?”

“Yeah, I’m already in there. Clarence Carter, Sr.” I verified the address and logged in the car, a two thousand-nine, red, Honda Fit.

One of those popped up in the system. I was about to ask if the tag was still on it when Burt came in, “Hey, Carter, you thinking about buying that Fit from Morris Simpson.”

Mr. Carter turned to Burt. “Yeah, my little girl has moved in with me and she’s going to school down with your boy Finn. She needs something reliable. Wanted you to look it over for me before I hand Simpson eight grand.”

“Well, lucky for you, I’ve been taking care of that car since Morris’s wife bought it. it’s in excellent condition mechanically. I had to replace that back bumper three times and the windshield twice though. I finally told them to sell the Fit and get her into something hardier.” Burt told them in his gruff but affable way. “I can say this Ann-Marie might not be a great driver, but she had that car in here for maintenance like clockwork. When Morris decided to get her that Traverse, he had me replace the Fit’s brakes, give her a fluids and oil system flush and replaced the oil and air filters to get her ready for resale. She’s a damn good little ride. Should last your girl another three to five years with good upkeep. But you’re gonna need to replace those tires before she starts tearing up the road between here and Columbus.”

“So, the car’s worth the eight grand?” Mr. Carter asked him bluntly.

Burt nodded. “To be honest, I told him to price it at ten, nine-five at the lowest. He must be giving you a break because he knows you.” 

“Alright, Burt. You’ll make sure my little girl’s car is running like clockwork?”

Burt nodded, and I swear he gave me a smile over Mr. Carter’s shoulder…which was hard since I was barely taller than the guy. “Vince and Finn will be down there. They are living off campus, but if she gives one of them a call, I’ll come down and do the work on a Sunday if she can’t get back up here.” He offered. Next thing I knew, I was exchanging numbers with Therese, and it was with her daddy’s not just permission but at his command.

Soon as they left, I turned to Burt. “Matchmaking, Burt…you didn’t strike me as the type.”

He shrugged. “I’m not…but both my boys seem worried about you being stuck among all the couples and being alone. Saw an opportunity…was I wrong?”

I flushed a little. He had noticed how hard I was checking Therese. “No Sir. You weren’t wrong. So, what’s the deal with Ms. Carter then?”

Burt rolled his eyes. “That’s why I got you the phone number, son. So, you could find out.” He laughed as he headed back to the actual shop.

And find out I did. Best of all, I wasn’t the one to make the first move. When I was making my way home from work that evening after helping to close down the shop, I got a text from Therese asking me if I was seeing anyone. I texted her back the simple truth that I wasn’t and hit her back with the same question. It was the first time in a long time I considered my single status to be a fortunate thing. By the time we finished texting, I was taking her out that Thursday evening. Of course, even before our first date, texting led to talking and we got to know each other pretty well. I was blatantly honest with her about my semi-tragic backstory and learned hers. I’d been right when I guessed she was biracial. I hadn’t figured that she was a German-American dual citizen. Her mother was German and her parents had met when her father was stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany.

“They’d only been seeing each other for six months when they realized that I was on the way. Mama’s parents were really not happy about it and kicked her out. They didn’t care that he was Black as much as they cared that he was American. Anyway, long story short, they got married and had me and my younger brother CJ. When I was like ten, they started having trouble. By the time I was twelve they were divorced, Mama got custody of me and CJ. She works for this big German company’s LA office. Daddy lives and works here. He got remarried when I was sixteen. Even though she’s not that much older than I am, I, actually, like his new wife. Christine is so Susy Homemaker that she was really perfect for Daddy. Christine has been pregnant like every other year for the last five. So, in addition to CJ, I’ve got two more little brothers and she’s got another one on the way.”

“Wow, its just me and Netta and Elle.” I said honestly.

She laughed. “I told Christine she couldn’t stop until she had a girl. She just turned thirty, she has time.”

“So, where are you transferring from?” I asked.

She sighed. “San Diego State. I did not do my due diligence when it came to picking a school. I just went to the one that gave me the most free money. That place sucked so hard. I was scared on campus all the time. Then last semester I got mugged and beaten up. I wasn’t hurt all that badly. But that was the last straw for Mama and Daddy. I was told not only did I need to transfer, but that Daddy and Christine were paying for me to come to Ohio State.”

“It’s not a bad school. The campus is pretty safe. Its not academically pitiful. They LOVE their sports, but their academics are not completely undervalued. What’s your major?”

“Business administration and management. I’m minoring in marketing. Thankfully, Ohio State is taking all my credit hours. I’d have screamed if they hadn’t.”

“Your major is my minor. I’m majoring in Sports Industry.” I told her. “I’m done with all my Gen Ed classes, except for one next semester and one that I have to take senior year.”

“I’ve got a couple more of those. SDSU didn’t require as many foreign language hours or as many art and humanities hours. I do have, like four of my major courses taken though.”

“That’s good. Sounds like you should still be on track.”

By the time Thursday came around, we knew pretty much each other’s relevant life history, goals, dreams and fall semester class schedule. I also knew enough about her to plan a damn good date. I borrowed Ben’s Suburban and picked her up at seven. My mother may not have won any awards, but I did have home training. I didn’t text her from the car. I parked and went to the door. Mr. Carter was slightly impressed. I guess he thought I was a hood rat or something. I met his wife Christine. She too seemed a little surprised. Amazingly enough, I wasn’t even a little surprised that she was White, too. We spoke for a moment, exchanging pleasantries while I waited on Therese. It only took her a couple of minutes, thank God. I had to say it took some serious strength of will not to just stand there with my mouth all open when she came down the stairs.

Therese wasn’t a tall woman, I was pretty sure she wasn’t even as tall as Netta. But her legs seemed to go on for miles. Her outfit was cute and I knew enough from the chicks Elle was buddies with to know it was a perfect first date outfit. She was wearing a pair of flat brown, strappy, thong sandals. Her toes were pedicured and painted a sexy goldish wine color. Her legs were so sexy and bare up to mid-thigh where her flirty, summery, layered skirt started. I couldn’t describe the colors of the skirt, there were a lot of them. I was able to pick out peach, brown, green, ivory and cream. There was a wide brown belt then a slim fitting, ivory tank top that made her golden-brown skin look soft and creamy. Her outfit was topped by a light denim jacket and big, gold square earrings. Her makeup was light and barely evident…the boldest color was the goldish, reddish brown of her lip gloss. Her wavy-slash-curly hair was down around her shoulders, but braided back at her temples. She grabbed a light brown saddle bag looking purse and kissed her dad and stepmother on the cheeks and away we went.

We had a nice dinner and great conversation at Thai Jasmine. She said it was great. Then we went and saw Jurassic World. We agreed on most of the salient points of the movie. Including the fact that the aunt was pretty damn awful in the beginning. She knew they were coming and couldn’t make her schedule work…for real. And the fact that the whole ‘divorcing parents’ storyline was tacked on and so very unnecessary. And the autism arc was way too subtle. We acknowledged that autism was a whole spectrum, but it wasn’t readily apparent that the kid was anywhere on the spectrum…at least not to us. Of course, we had to ask, why the only brother in the whole movie had to die. Could a black man not survive one of those movies? Though truthfully speaking, no Brother was taking a job anywhere that there would be apex predators that could swallow them whole, no way in hell. And finally…Owen was the pimp. He, and the autistic kid, were the only sustainably likeable people in the whole movie. 

After the movie, we stopped for ice cream before I took her home…she had a one AM curfew and we made it by a couple of minutes. We made arrangements to go to church together Sunday morning. I was pretty sure I should have found out where her father attended before I agreed to go to her church. Of course, it turned out that her family attended ADA Methodist. We ran into Mrs. Danica and Dr. Benton. I introduced them to Therese. They already knew her dad and stepmom. I was shocked that Mrs. Danica didn’t go digging too deep. I should have realized that meant something, but at the time I was just relieved. Mr. Clarence seemed happy with my being familiar with several other members of the church and having at least a little bit of biblical knowledge. After church, I dragged Therese to meet Finn, Lauren, LaKeith, Karofsky, Adams, Jake, Chase, Ryder and Unique for lunch. We were having lunch together because time was winding down and either people wanted to bond, or they wanted to bond and find out about where we’d be staying for the next two years. I brought Therese with me because I needed to make sure that she wasn’t going to lunch on U, or treat Elle foul just because neither of them were traditional chicks.

Within minutes of us being seated, that worry evaporated on the breeze. We’d all met up at Bandidos Mexican Restaurant after church, or whatever, so we were all in a range of clothes from suit and tie and nice dress to flip=flops and shorts…fresh from the shower after having worked out. Introductions were made all around and Unique was in rare form. “Oh Chile…where did you get that cute little dress. I need it in my life.”

Therese chuckled. “You aren’t going to believe me. I got it from Zulily.”

“Wait, the mommy blogger app place?” U seemed shocked.

Therese nodded. “I can always find cute clothes, and usually on the cheap. Christine loves it. That’s my stepmother. She turned me onto it.” 

“Learn something new.” U laughed. “I’m gonna have to check them out. This sista gal loves her fashion, but she is ballin’ on a budget.”

“Yeah, Girl, me too.” Therese shot back.

From there the conversation just seemed to flow. I’d been nervous as hell bring her to meet my friends so early in the grand scheme of things. I’d been positive that Sasha could have been the one. She’d gotten along with most of the people I hung out with in Lima, the ones she’d met anyway. Sasha had been cool with Elle, but always seemed a little bit tense when I mentioned or spoke to her about U. To be honest, Therese just fit in a hell of a lot more. Sasha was pretty shy and she had that social awkwardness that a lot of science serious people had. Therese didn’t. she didn’t try hard…she was just herself and she found some level of connection with everyone at the expanded table. She and Unique went in hard on fashion, talking about that site and their plus size offerings even managed to draw Elle in on the conversation. She bonded with Jake on being biracial in America and how it seemed as if their White parent was all too often ignored. Though Therese’s mother had it worse since Puckerman Senior had been the most absentee of all deadbeat dads. She, Finn and LaKeith all liked that computer game he loved so much where he, basically, got to play god. Chase turned the subject to going off to college and Therese and Elle led a master class on what real young women needed to know before heading off to school. Unique and Chase both listened and learned.

But they weren’t the only ones. I learned a lot just listening to the ladies bonding. Before that lunch, I’d known that Therese had had a few serious relationships, including one that she didn’t really like to talk about. That afternoon I found out that old dude was a controlling, domineering dick head who though that gaslighting was a proper means of communication and cheated like he breathed. He had gotten into her head. So much so that she’d spent the better part of her senior year of high school and the early part of her freshman year of college dating that muthafucker. She had ended up isolated and she’d needed some pretty heavy counseling after the son of a bitch was arrested for raping someone else. Thankfully, she’d found the strength to break up with him and not take him back after that came to light. Finn and I exchanged looks. We were both thinking the same thing. We wanted to kick that guy’s ass. Later when I thought about it deeper, it was a little troubling that she’d needed counseling. I didn’t know if I was sensitive enough to be who she needed. She had had a couple of shorter term relationships the previous school year, so, I was probably not the rebound guy, but I’d still need to take care to build any relationship on honesty and my integrity. I was up to that part of the challenge. I just didn’t want to say things that accidentally caused her any pain or problems.

After that luncheon, Therese and I saw each other as much as we could during that final week I was in Lima. The very next Sunday, the Buckeyes’ sports teams were all due back on campus for our camps, before the start of the football, wrestling, swimming, soccer and a couple of other seasons. We loaded up Finn’s truck and Ben’s Suburban and drove to three-seventy-one and three-seventy-three Chittenden Avenue in Columbus. The six of us were living in three-seventy-one. Lauren had already been there and everything she said had the rest of us chomping at the bit to see the place. The duplex was one of the ones with the front doors on opposite sides of the structure. Each front door was right off a small porch and next to a two-car carport. There was a small fenced-in side and back yard beyond that. We walked in to a hallway with a small den off to the left. The den was decorated in blues, teals and browns. The room looked comfortable as hell. It contained a good sized sectional, with a big ottoman coffee table. I would later find out it was two identical ottomans that could be separated to provide extra seating if that was what we needed. The room held a big ass media center with a big TV, an Xbox OneS and six controllers. Damn, I loved Commune…they were the best kind of people. There was no other way could we have afforded the rent on a place even half that nice.

Further down the hall, there was a doorway that came in from the carport. To the left was Elle’s Haven, we took her computers in there and left her to it. She had all the furniture she would need; desks, comfy chairs, bookcases…the whole nine. The prevailing colors in that room were ivory, gold, navy and burgundy. It was a perfectly Lauren Zizes room. Beyond that was a three-piece bathroom, no tub though. It wasn’t the biggest room, but it had everything that it needed to have. And it was so clean. There was a small linen closet outside the bathroom that was waiting to be stocked with toilet paper and towels…the necessities. Then, I checked out the mudroom. They had even furnished the mudroom. There was enough storage in there that we could keep our weather gear ready and waiting on our need rather than having to take up extra room in our bedroom closets. I headed past the stairs and moved into the kitchen, living and dining rooms. The kitchen wasn’t huge, but it was damn nice. The decorator had gone pretty damn high end with the appliances. Samsung was everywhere, the French door refrigerator, double oven electric range, the dishwasher…that bad boy even had Wi-Fi so we could start it from anywhere with an app on our phones. The only appliance that wasn’t Samsung was the microwave. There weren’t a whole lot of cabinets, but with the walk-in pantry, there was more than enough storage for our needs. The dining room held a nice large table that would seat eight. And a bar cart…probably the hardest drinks it would ever hold would be some beer and wine. Unique couldn’t drink. Finn didn’t drink and after the Gremlin experience, I wasn’t hitting anything harder than a craft beer. Elle was trying to see if she was going to be a lady who drank wines…LaKeith might join her. But Karofsky didn’t strike me as having an elevated palate.

The living room looked comfortable, but it was clearly a gathering and conversation place. There was no television or game system. Though there was an echo that would allow us to play music in the room and probably get answers to questions if we happened to be using the room for a study group or something. The downstairs was a study in ivorys, teals, blues, greens and browns. It was very cohesive and just flowed from the front door all the way through to the French doors that went into our shared backyard. In the backyard, in between our French doors and those of the other unit were some large storm doors. Elle already had the keys for the lock and we went down into the shared basement that offered us storage, a gym, and the laundry and mechanical as well as a half bath. The whole basement was storm shelter and could clearly hold the six of us as well as at least another fifteen, twenty people with no problem. And considering that there was a TV down there too, it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable a stay, if needed. The gym equipment was top notch and I knew that Elle, Finn, Karofsky and I would be down there a lot.

From there we headed back into the house and loaded up to start taking things up to our bedrooms. The study was a decent sized bedroom that had just been repurposed. Instead of a bed and dressers and such there were two desks and desk chairs, four arm chairs with tables next to them and storage benches in the closet that could be pulled out for extra seating or surface area. One of the desks held an all-in-one computer and the other had an Echo dot on the surface. The designer had made sure that converting the room back to a bedroom would be easy, they’d even installed a closet organization system. On one of the shelves of the light wood closet organizer sat six throws in colors to match the rug that covered the hardwood floor. The whole room screamed function, but it was soothing and comfortable at the same time. There was a large but not deep linen closet outside it. I checked it out. There were labeled shelves that held extra sheets and comforters and pillow cases for each of the four bedrooms. Okay, maybe Black women weren’t the only ones who were nosy.

While I was checking the linen closet, Lauren headed into the study. “I’m sorry Finn…I’m gonna have to marry Mercedes. I know it was her. The first floor and the second are on two different networks. Me and the Xbox won’t kill the bandwidth for the rest of the house.” She explained to him merrily.

None of the rest of us shared her exhilaration at that. But we all agreed that it was nice to know. Finn whispered something in her ear I was glad I couldn’t hear and I went to check out my bedroom. And it was definitely mine. Looking in each of the non-master bedrooms, it was easy to tell whose bedroom was whose. Elle and Finn’s had the master and their room was heavy on the ‘jewel tones’ and burgundies. U’s room was more feminine and had a teal and silver color scheme. LaKeith and Karofsky’s room was pretty masculine and ice blue and grey with pops of ‘earth tones’. My room was all me in shades of ocean blue and deeper gray. I walked into that room and wanted to stay there forever. My room made me think of a storm swept sea. I liked it a little bit better than I liked my room at home and that was saying something because I LOVED my room in Lima and had barely wanted to leave it that morning.

Once we scooped out the place, it was time to get serious. We handled unloading by just, literally, grabbing stuff out of Finn’s truck, Ben’s Suburban, Karofsky’s Camry, his father’s Avalon, and LaKeith’s Rav4 and carrying it in and up until everything was empty. Once things were in the large area at the top of the stairs, we were each in charge of taking our different shit into our rooms. Only after the crates, boxes, suitcases, and-slash-or big ass Tupperware containers were in the appropriate rooms…for the most part, Elle and I’d had to switch two of our big add Tupperware containers…did the parental units divvy up and helped us unpack. I’d ended up with Ben and Mrs. Carole. There had been a little discussion between the four of them. But it was unanimously decided by Laura, Elle, Burt and Finn that neither Ben nor Mrs. Carole could handle accidentally seeing any mispacked sex paraphernalia. With that one voiced thought, Ben and Mrs. Carole beat me to my room.

Once I’d lugged in all my big ass Tupperware and suitcases, into my bedroom, Ben, Mrs. Carole and I got to work. We got my stuff unpacked pretty quickly. Probably because Kurt, Mercedes and Hudson had been almost relentlessly, ruthlessly organized when we packed the previous May. And man, Kurt’s tip to put dryer sheets between the clothes and sprinkle some Downy Unstoppables in each of the containers had left everything smelling so fresh and so clean. I decided to go ahead and unpack my winter clothes, too. Even after a couple of northern winters, I still started rocking my sweaters and heavier clothes by October, so it wouldn’t do much to put it down in storage for just a few weeks. Instead when I emptied the two trunks Mrs. Danica would never let me return, I filled one with my no longer needed twin sheets, comforter sets and pillows. I put that one right outside the door to go down to the storage room. I filled the other one with my extra school stuff and put it in the free space at the bottom of one side of my closet. I slid the under-bed storage container that contained my extra blankets under my bed and unpacked my smallest little container into the nightstand on my preferred side of the bed.

To be honest, me and Ben did all the heavy lifting while Mrs. Carole organized my clothes in the closet and dresser drawers. I wasn’t mad at her. My momma had raise me right…I would never have let her lift anything heavy in the first place. When I looked the closet over, I chuckled to myself. She’d definitely been Kurt Hummel trained. She looked around while me and Ben were nesting the Tupperware containers inside each other to take them down to the basement and stopped suddenly. “Ben, we’re missing that one box.”

He looked around too. “I’ll go check and see if Elle or Laura have seen it.”

“Oh, I didn’t have any actual boxes.” I said soothingly. “I’m pretty sure that I have everything. I mean, I think I own more stuff now than I’ve owned in my whole life added all together…but I’m sure that this is all of it.”

She gave me an enigmatic smile. “We’ll see, Vince.” She said and patted my hand like she knew best. Sure enough, she did know best.

Ben came back in with Burt, and Laura, and they were carrying a white box with the Byte-Able Computers logo on the top. “You were right Carole…but it was on purpose. Laura didn’t want to miss out on the giving of the gift.” Ben told her with a grin. One should note that Laura didn’t look at all apologetic.

“Well, Kiddo, you worked really hard this summer and we all know that you’re trying to save up to get you some wheels.” Ben started.

Carole chimed in. “Yeah, and we figured that with the new housing setup, even a fully loaded a tablet was only going to do so much for you.” 

“And borrowing a computer to get your papers typed and everything won’t be as easy and we both know that you’ll never get shit done in a campus computer lab. If they even exist anymore.” Burt added. “You’ll be entirely too popular once the season starts and everyone learns puts your face with your name.”

“We didn’t want you to have to spend so much of your savings on something you’ll need when you’re on track to be able to get your bike by the end of your Christmas break.” Laura completed their thoughts and passed me the box. “We didn’t go new…you’re not Lauren…she needs the newest thing. But she and the crew at the computer store in the Village…they said that that one was rebuilt as a workhorse. It’s got the newest operating system, Windows Ten. We had them put on the whole Office Suite, Quickbooks Pro and Adobe. Oh, and Lauren had them put something called Pidgin on there.”

“Yeah, and she was adamant that we get you the one with the i7 core and the solid-state drive. Plus, it has a webcam and Bluetooth…the works.” Ben told me. “And she put the VLC video player on there yesterday.”

“I…I…Thank you, I don’t know. You guys didn’t have to…I mean.” I babbled like an idiot.

Ben laughed. “We told you, Kid, you’re ours now. Burt and Carole wanted to put in on it too to thank you for all you’ve done for Finn. Damn, Kid, do you have any clue how many times you brought him back and forth for his physical therapy appointments so neither of them would have to miss work.”

“Well, those dicks at the hospital were making noise about how much time Mrs. Carole had spent gone when Finn was in the coma. Bastards. And Burt was needed at the shop.” I defended unnecessarily. “Besides, we had fun. Finn’s my boy. He’s family.”

“Exactly, and you are too.” Burt said sternly.

I couldn’t do much beyond hugging and thanking them, so that was what I did. When we came out from the gift giving ceremony, we took the time to take all the containers and extra things down to our side of the basement storage room. We all cleaned up and, per our yearly tradition, went through the place making lists of needs and wants. There were a few of the first and very few of the latter. We’d brought some staples with us, toilet paper, paper towel, soaps…stuff like that. Not a lot, because as it turned out that the eight pack of tissue only provided for two rolls per bathroom. Thankfully, Elle had her Amazon Prime account all ready to go. It was linked to the household account we’d set up specifically for that kind of thing. Over the summer, we’d all put a hundred bucks into it every month just to have it ready for that exact purpose. We went through and ordered everything we needed and, as she’d said months before when we found out what people liked and wanted, she created subscriptions. That was perfect. Especially since we soon realized that the only things we could all agree on was Dawn and Cascade Platinum for the dishes, Bounty and Charmin for the paper goods, Tide, Clorox and Clorox Two, Downy, Unstoppables and Bounce for the clothes.

But as for body soaps…they were coming through Amazon too, but we were all over the place. Elle liked Dove, but she said that Unique was a Caress girl. Finn used Dove’s Men Plus Care, I was Ivory for life, but Laura had gotten me the Nivea Men Energy 3-in-1 Shower Gel so I used both. We found out that Karofsky was an Aveeno soap user and LaKeith was serious about his Cetaphil, Burt’s Bees Natural Skin Care for Men combination. Apparently, the swimming was hard on his skin and those two were really natural and didn’t mess him up. Of course, Elle being Elle and having been educated in some of the more basic tenets of Blackness, added my Vaseline Cocoa Butter Deep Conditioning Lotion, LaKeith’s Cetaphil Daily Advance Ultra Hydrating Lotion for Dry Sensitive Skin, and U’s Eucerin to her subscription list. I told her to add some Jergens and Vaseline Intensive Rescue Soothing Moisture Lotion for herself and Finn.

But beyond that, our plan had been to rely on internet research. “What’s the best thing for mopping hard wood floors?” I asked looking at the floors throughout both the bottom and top floor. Then Finn wanted to know what needed to be used on the porcelain tile bathroom floors. It turned out, at least according to what we were able to extrapolate from the plethora of different articles on the subject, the answer was two products from the same company, Bona. While LaKeith and I were arguing the best thing to use for the shower…Elle got an email from Hudson with a list of lessor approved cleaning products as recommended by their NYC housekeeper. That answered that, and the very next day, we got them all in a big ass box from Amazon along with a welcome note. A week and a half later when our neighbors moved in they got the same welcome gift from Amor Verissima, our landlords. That seemed like a smart move to me. We stopped researching and all agreed that keeping those cleaners restocked was so much easier than trying to figure that shit out by ourselves.

The two weeks of camp were hard. They were physically taxing. They were emotionally draining. They were ridiculously full of activity. Other than Finn, I barely saw my housemates, we were all just that busy. But I did make time to text and talk with Therese every day. I told her all about our practices and the fact that Coach Meyer was trying to kill off the lesser players, almost literally. She told me about the fact that her little brother CJ was visiting and would be with her on Move-in Day. We talked about the dorm she was moving into, and the fact that she had a single. She’d had quite the opposite roommate experience from me. Her first roommate had been totally emo and a secret cutter. They’d gotten along about as well as oil and water. The roommate had changed rooms after the first semester. Her second roommate had been even worse. Tamantha and Therese had gotten along like Old Bay and Ice Cream, or vinegar and milk, or whatever other non-mixy things came to mind. According to Therese, old girl had been ratchet as hell and a thief to boot. Her sophomore year had brought her three roommates over the course of the year. The only one she’d gotten along with decently was the one who’d gone looking for her and found her when Therese hadn’t returned when she said she’d be back. It was thanks to Dionna that nothing worse had happened to Therese after she was mugged and roughed up. They kept in touch, but Therese had still been very happy to realize that she’d been placed in a single, and not just a single, but she would have her own bathroom too. Since she was a transfer, she was moving in the day after Unique…so I knew I was going to be tired, but I still offered my assistance.

I did meet CJ, who at sixteen was only like two inches shorter than I was, when I met the Carters at Jones Hall on Move-In Day. He wasn’t into real football, even though he looked like he would make a damn good running back, he did play Madden though, so we had no problem talking. He ran track and was on his high school swim team. Of course, he was the man of his house, and took his role as such very seriously, so I wasn’t surprised when he managed to separate me from the others for a talk. He pulled me into the stairwell for a little mano-a-mano. “Alright, Vince, you seem like an a’right kind of guy. So, I’m gonna keep it one hun’drt…my sister has been through more than enough from dudes. If you are fucking around with her…if you’re just trying to get it in…move the fuck on. You might be taller than me. You might be bigger than me…but I know that I’m faster and probably smarter than you. I can and will fuck you up if I even think that you’ve become a danger to Therese’s heart or her psyche.”

“Look, CJ, I’ve got a big sister myself, so I’m not going to downplay the love you feel for her or the responsibility you feel for her. But the truth is that while I never want to be a danger to your sister’s psychological health and well-being, I am hoping to be a danger to her heart. Not because I want to hurt her or control her or anything…but just because you cannot fall in love with someone without putting your heart in danger.”

He rolled his eyes. “Dude, everything about you screams player. You expect me to believe that you’re looking for Mrs. Right…”

“You don’t have to believe it. It’s the truth. Look, kid, I’ve done my share…don’t get it twisted. Boys are going to enjoy learning to use their dicks. But I’m a grown ass man now so I know that life is about quality not quantity. Why should I want to or try to fuck all the women, when I can find a good quality woman and build a life with her?”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I guess you aren’t as dumb as most football players usually are. You’re intelligent enough to know a quality woman when you see one.”

I smirked. “Mo-Fo, I’ve got a fucking three point two five GPA with both a major and a minor…never doubt, this cat ain’t dumb.”

Our conversation was ended when Therese came to find me. “Vince, can you please tell me why I just got a friend request from a global superstar…that Facebook says is a mutual friend with you?”

I sighed. “Because Mercedes Antoinette Jones is a damn busy body who thinks that just because I’m a dead ringer for her brother…she has to check out any chick I get serious about…and because I forbade her from having her Social Media Manager just hack into your accounts to find out more about you.”

“Why…What…that doesn’t. I still don’t get it.” She babbled.

CJ laughed. “Terri, he’s friends with KAMA. His White sister went to high school with them and so did his best friend. He was on at least one of their red carpets.”

She face palmed. “Because, of course, Finn and Lauren are the same two from the car accident that was on Entertainment Tonight. I swear, I think I knew that…you’re just all so normal, I think I forgot. Holy Shit…the people at church…the Joneses… those are Mercedes Jones parents.” I just nodded. “I feel so stupid.” She moaned…then she turned on her brother. “What have I told you about calling me Terri?”

Our conversation ended when she chased her brother away with murder in her eyes. It was really funny to watch…and not be the brother being chased by his older sister with that look in her eyes. But I was glad that she’d started chasing CJ. It gave me a chance to laugh my ass off. I’d thought I was upfront with her about the fact that I was friends with Mercedes, Sam and Puck, since I’d wanted to make sure she wasn’t trying to use me for an in…she was a fan. But it never dawned on me that I was being at all subtle, or that she really hadn’t made the connection between my friends Mercedes, Sam and Puck and KAMA. They came back looking hot and tired. I had to admit, they’d run up and then down who knew how many flights of stairs, Therese’s room was on the twelfth floor. And CJ had made her chase him up at least three of the four remaining flights. They deserved to look hot and tired.

When we finally made it into her room after the conversation, it was to find that Christine had basically worked homemaker magic on that dorm room. Things had been rearranged so that the desk, bookcases, one on top of the other, were immediately inside the door. The bed had been moved across the room to under the window and was fully made. With its expensive as hell looking coral and light aqua green comforter set with like five different pillows, Christine had it looking like something out of a college brochure or a perfect dorm room blog post. The microfridge had a small, green, wooden ‘pantry’ with a glass door inset showing three shelves of snacks and dishes and a drawer next to it and beyond that was the big wardrobe that took the place of a traditional closet. The pantry must have been something they brought with them, though it seemed to be the only furniture piece they had. Therese was so classy she didn’t even have posters, she had framed art work. Okay, one of them was a KAMA poster and another was an Jason Derulo one, but they were both in frames.

They invited me to dinner with them, but I told them that they should go just family. It wasn’t that much of a sacrifice. I was tired as shit and I’d had Finn drop me off, so I would have to make the mile and a half run back to the duplex. Which, including the two miles I’d run that morning on the treadmill in the basement and the three trips around the oval I made on the way home, would get me above the five miles Coach had us running on our ‘off’ days. Plus too, Unique had promised to cook a dinner that would taste amazing and fill all the requirements of Coaches Meyer, Wadley and Rosselli had for me and Karofsky, LaKeith and Elle respectively. After tasting the dinner her mom had prepared us the night before, before she left…I had definitely looked forward to that. And it was so very good. Totally worth the possible need to backtrack with Therese. It turned out that I had luck out there too though. She thought I was very thoughtful not to insinuate myself into the last evening she had with her family.

Welcome Week was a busy time for both Unique and Therese. As a freshman, Unique had had to go the Faculty-Student Welcome picnic, which was why she was there a day before Therese. But there were activities and advisory meetings for both of them all week. Those of us returning to Ohio State had it better, but not really. We didn’t have to hop all over campus, but we did have serious exercising and practice schedules. By the time classes finally started I was ready to be tired intellectually rather than just physically. I was happy to find that Therese and I shared the same Foundations of Finance class. She was also in the same section of Econ forty-one-eleven as me and Elle. That was all welcome news, but one of the best days of my life was the Saturday before classes started. Laura and Ben came down and took Elle, Finn, and Netta out to dinner. Their visit had been a surprise, and I’d already asked Therese out for that same night. Ben and Laura, they were awesome about allowing her to join us.

I let her know of the change of plans, but she was cool with it. I think she was dying to meet Netta. I was worried as hell about it. I knew for a fact that she and Elle had worked on a joint ‘shovel’ speech. That they apparently delivered in the ladies’ room of The Avenue Steak Tavern when the ladies went to the bathroom en mass before our entrees were served. When they came back Elle, Netta and even Laura looked a little smug. Therese looked a little shook. She did lean over and whisper, “your sisters and mom love you very much.”

Before I could ask her why she’d called Laura my mom, Ben tapped his wine glass. “I’m sure that you all are wondering why we suddenly surprised you all with by dragging you out to dinner on such short notice.” He started. “Well, the simple truth is that we received some amazing news yesterday and this was the longest we could wait to share it.”

“Vincent Orenthal Howard, the court has approved our adoption. You’re officially, legally and indubitably our son now.”

There was so much hugging and joy that no one could say much beyond, ‘I’m so happy for you.’ And ‘Oh my God you must be so happy.’ I personally didn’t manage to say a single word. “The court has ordered a new birth certificate for you…now you have the choice of keeping the name your birth mother gave you or changing it.”

“Can I keep the name Momma gave me and change the one Daddy gave me?” I blurted out excitedly.

Everyone at the table but me and Netta looked confused. But it was Ben who put their confusion into words. “But I thought you said Zizes would put you too far down the alphabet?”

I laughed and shook my head. “No, I mean, yeah…I think that I kinda do want to hyphenate Howard and Zizes like you suggested. But I meant Orenthal. I hate my middle name. I hate OJ Simpson. I hate my father. Getting rid of that name would be a pleasure.”

Netta laughed. “I don’t blame you…but at least Momma got to pick your first name.”

Laura smiled. “Well, Antwan said that he can start the proceeding for you to become one of us in a year or so…I guess that gives you time to come up with something you like better than Ornetta.”

That, of course, started some more joy and happiness. I’m pretty sure Netta cried. Not that I would ever repeat that. I’d become a grown man…I wanted to live long enough to be an old one. Elle looked at her and smirked. “Stick to the names that start with an L…keep up the tradition. So, Vince…what’s your new middle name going to be?”

I thought about all I had learned since meeting my new family. I thought about the kind of man I wanted to be in the future. I thought of the hopes and dreams I had for the future. Only one name seemed right. I looked into my dad’s eyes and said just one word. “Benjamin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN 1/30/2018: As I was editing this, I found out from SnowDove30 that Mark Salling took his own life today. On one hand I feel horrible that the actor who portrayed ‘Puck’ committed suicide. On the other side, I firmly believe that the character Mark played would have been the first one to kick his ass for his inexcusable choices. Unfortunately, because he took his own life, I do not believe that Mark will find any peace in death, but I pray for peace and solace for those he left behind.
> 
> Read...Comment...Repeat  
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	20. Perfect Symphony (Ed Sheeran feat. Andrea Bocelli)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn's Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her beta reading awesomeness.

Chapter 19

Perfect Symphony (Ed Sheeran feat. Andrea Bocelli)  
Finn PoV

The civil trial about me and Lauren’s car accident was, in a lot of ways, worse than the criminal trial. Most ways really since the douchebag Paley, who’d hit us, had decided to plead guilty at his criminal trial. So, the only hard part of that trial was actually the sentencing portion…but even that was pretty quick. And I never had to listen to people tell me how close I really came to not living. That was really hard to hear. I mean, it was one thing to know…but I hadn’t actually KNOWN. If that made sense outside of my head. Still, as hard as it was to get through. I’m kind of glad that it happened, for a couple of reasons. First of all, when I was testifying and trying to make Mr. Chiles understand that I’d have rather died than letting Lauren get anymore hurt if I could prevent it…I knew in that moment that Lauren Amelia Zizes was it for me. My mother had been sure, my whole life and unsurprised after she found out what had happened to my biological father that he had never gotten together with another woman. When I’d asked her once why, she’d just shook her head and said “Christopher just didn’t have it in him to love anyone else. It just wasn’t how he was wired.” While I was up on that stand, I knew I was just like the man who had helped my mother have me. I had never felt the way I felt about Lauren. Not for Quinn. Not for Rachel, Not for Santana. Not for the couple of Cheerios that I messed with when I wasn’t with any of them. Never. I knew in my heart of hearts, she was it for me.

Another good thing that came out of the trial was that I got a chance to confront the asshole that I could have been. Well, I was probably never going to be rich, but I could have spent my life racing from one drug to the next…chasing whatever felt good without thought to what I was doing to those around me. I was so glad that my life had been changed. I wasn’t sure that I could pin point an exact moment when my outlook changed, but it really all seemed to go back to choosing to define beauty myself rather than listening to what people told me I should think was beautiful. By the time the jury came back with their rulings…I knew that I wanted for Lauren and I what our friends had. I wanted Lauren to be my fiancée. I wanted us to have a home where we could live and love together. Granted, I was pretty sure that our money was going to be tied up for a long time, so, I’d been trying to figure out how to make that happen. I knew that Burt wanted me to sit the ASE certification test that summer. I’d logged enough hours apprenticing him and his workers while we had rebuilt the truck that saved my life and the rest of the summers since he and Mom got married that I had the requirements to become certified in Engine Repair, Engine Performance and Brakes. I wouldn’t have the certification to work at the shop Burt just opened in Friendship Village…almost all my time had been spent on American made cars. But I knew I could work at his first location. I decided that that would be my start. I’d work hard and save as much as I could.

I was not expecting what happened after that trial. I thought for sure that I was going to end up waiting months, if not years while Paley and his insurance company kept things tied up in appeals or at least put it in one of those annuity things they make commercials about getting money paid against. I never expected to end the day with more money than Mom and Burt, together, made in a year. I knew that I would pay Burt back for the truck he had mostly rebuilt by himself that last summer when my hands weren’t working too good. I helped as much as I could but there was a lot of fine motor skills involved in repairing, rebuilding and basically remaking a twelve year old Dodge Ram truck. I loved him for doing it. But it was only right that he got paid for at least the parts. I knew he would never let me pay him for the labor…and he would probably tell me the parts cost way less than they actually did. But still, I was going to try. It was the right thing to do. 

I also knew that the smartest thing to do would be to make the money make more money. Puck was thinking about that before I even did. He had his uncle call me and I immediately put over half of the punitive damages money into Saul Mayzer’s hands for management and growth. Since I didn’t have to worry about tuition for at least two semesters and I didn’t really know what I should do with the rest. I mean, I knew that I wanted to get Lauren a real engagement ring. Something that told the world that I wasn’t just ready to die for her, but that I wanted nothing more than to live with and for her. That meant that I needed to figure out how to purpose. I wanted to do something different. Something uniquely Lauren. I also needed to find a ring that looked like her. She wasn’t a huge fan of solitaire rings…I knew that. She thought that they looked puny and like they were going to break in a strong enough wind. After not finding anything anywhere I’d looked, I had no clue where to even go to continue looking. Thank Grilled Cheezus that I had my brother and his best friend in my life.

I spent the first three weeks of the summer trying to figure out how to ask her. I asked all the married guys at the shop how they had done it. Like all of them said they took their girl to a fancy restaurant and popped the question in some, not to be mean but, boring way. I knew that Lauren would get mad at me for ruining her dessert by putting a ring in it. Not that she was eating dessert that summer. We were doing some serious diet and exercise because she was trying to get down to meet the female freestyle weight class of seventy-five to eighty kilograms. Lauren said that the last time she weighed under two hundred, she was twelve. But Vince and I, we were committed to two things that summer…helping Lauren and checking in on Unique. We were a lot better at the first one than the second one for the first half of the summer. Maybe because we knew how to help Lauren. Other than texting Unique stupid jokes and asking if she needed anything, we were kind of out of our depths on how to help her. I guess three things, because we also had our jobs, too.

All three of us had summer jobs that summer. Lauren was working for her dad and Artie’s mom…and all of the parents who had offices in the new place out behind Burt’s new shop. She was doing all their tech support. It was great because they were paying her really well. Plus, they had no problem giving her a week off in June when she went back to that Kurt Angle wrestling camp. Anyway, Kurt and Mercedes saved my life when they were both in town for Father’s Day and to check on Unique.

“Finn, you’ve been talking about this all summer. How do you not have a clue yet?” Kurt grumbled when I asked him about rings for the millionth time.

I shrugged. “I’ve been to every jewelry store in Lima…except that one that we’re not allowed to go to because they tried to kill Jake and Cedes’ brothers. None of them have anything that Lauren would say yes to, let alone wear every day.”

“So go to a store not in Lima.” Cedes shot back.

“I would, but I don’t want Lauren to pick out her own ring. You both said that was kind of tacky.”

“I stand by it.” They both returned. Then they did their secret handshake to approve of each other’s fierceness.

I didn’t see where it was so bad. People do it all the time. But I didn’t want to be wrong and Lauren get mad at me for not being romantic. Since I knew the girls and Kurt talked about that kind of things. I decided that I should just listen to them on that one. “Okay, but every time I try to sneak away Lauren finds out. I suck at lying to her and Vince is even worse.” I told them honestly. Then again…maybe my story shouldn’t have been an almost forgotten appointment with my physical therapist. The same one I hadn’t needed to see since the first semester of that previous school year.

Kurt rolled his eyes. “Fine, I’ll tell her we’re going to spend a day together doing some brotherly bonding. We’ll go down to Columbus. I can and will find the absolutely most perfect of all engagement rings for Lauren ‘Never Say Her Middle Name Aloud If You Aren’t a Government Official’ Zizes, or my name isn’t Kurt Elizabeth Hummel.”

“So, then he just needs the perfect way to pop the question.” Mercedes said thoughtfully. “He’s right though Lauren would hate a boring proposal. She would want something big and bold and awesome. So, what does Lauren consider big and bold and awesome?”

I thought about it. “Lauren loves wrestling. She does the real kind, but she loves to watch the WWE and TNT. I had thought that maybe I should do it last week when we went to was Money in the Bank, a pay per view, a major big deal to wrestling fans…” I explained when they looked confused. “Anyway, Vince had given us the tickets for Christmas. It was great, but I didn’t have a ring, so I couldn’t ask her then.”

“When is the next Money in the Bank?” Kurt asked me.

I shook my head. “That’s not how…look every pay per view has a different name. But they are annual events. There won’t be another ‘Money in the Bank’ until twenty-sixteen and who knows where it will be. But,” I whipped out my phone and called up the WWE app. “They have another pay per view…it’s not a big one or anything…but it’s in St. Louis next month, just a week after Elle’s birthday.”

“Oh, that’s perfect. You can give her the tickets to the pay per view thing for her birthday and she’ll think that that’s the big deal, then when your there…”

“I can ask her and give her the ring we find.” I said happily. I looked and pouted a little. “Ring side is all reserved, already. Shoot.”

Cedes whipped out her phone. “Haja, I need a favor. I don’t know who to call to make it happen, but I need two front row tickets…” She gestured for the information.

“Ring side at WWE Battleground at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis on July nineteenth.” I supplied. She relayed the information. “But Mercedes…I’m gonna pay.” I said sternly. I got out my wallet and gave her my debit card.

Cedes gave him my information and cut me a side eye. “Aren’t you worried that Haja might steal your identity?” She teased.

“I’m more worried that he’ll use it for these tickets today and then this time next month, miraculously an equal amount, if not more, will show up in my account as if by magic.” I said knowing how my friends all worked.

Now, Cedes was the one who was pouting. But we both knew I was right. Her guy was a miracle worker. Less than fifteen minutes later, while we were talking about the specifics of how to ask, Mr. Haja called Cedes back. He’d gotten me the tickets. They weren’t ramp side or stuck behind the announcers…not that those would be bad at all since Lauren and I were both tall. But still, the tickets were for the very center of the right side of the ring. We’d probably be on TV and everything. “I’m gonna get a shirt made and right before the Main Event, I’ll take off whatever I’m wearing over it and boom. LAUREN WILL YOU MARRY ME? Will be on the front and maybe Ma’am will you marry Finnie on the back.”

Kurt looked scandalized, but Mercedes just laughed. “Oh, Lauren will absolutely love that. The shirt should be black with teal or blue writing.”

“That’s something Vince can help me with. He’s working for Laura and she has a guy who makes specialty tees for her store.” I told them.

It all worked out perfectly. Lauren had to leave really early that Monday morning, so Kurt and I drove her to Columbus to the airport for her flight to Massachusetts for her wrestling camp. Then he and I started shopping. We went to eleven different jewelry stores and I think we saw the same rings at all of them. All of them looked like rings for miscellaneous Cheerios or Rachel who would love a big, gaudy diamond solitaire or something like that. And all of them said that they would need to special order a ring in Elle’s side. I was tired and I was disappointed. Kurt was not. He was still, annoyingly, optimistic and shopping just invigorated him. He’d also found a broach, a pair of cuff links, some earrings that would be ‘darling’ on Cedes, and who could keep track of all the other things. “Okay, this is the last store with even somewhat positive reviews online. If we don’t find anything here, we’ll get some lunch and try Dayton.” Kurt assured me as we headed towards Argo and Lehne Jewelers.

From the second we walked into the store, it was different. The sales people didn’t greet Kurt and ignore me until they were told that I was the customer. They were really nice and they talked to me about Lauren and before I knew it, one of them looked at the other. “Do you think?” the shorter of the two asked suddenly.

“It’s a substantial ring. It wouldn’t fade away on her.” The other, James, agreed. “But bring some of the newer styles too.”

The shorter guy, Robert, brought out a tray with a selection of rings. They were pretty and they weren’t quite as cookie cutter as the others I’d seen that day. There were silver and platinum and gold and rose gold. I shoved the rose gold ones off to the side. None of them ‘spoke to me’. I asked about one I sort of liked. But they told me it would have to be ordered in her size and the wait for it to come in was two weeks. I didn’t have that kind of patience. Finally, I asked about the only ring on that tray that really seemed like it was made for Lauren; like it was something she would really love. “What size is this one?” I asked quietly.

James and Robert exchanged quick smiles. But it was Robert who answered me. “It is a women’s size nine and a half.”

James took over from there. “The ring actually dates back to our when our great-grandfather was still designing and creating jewelry, and it has quite the story. This heirloom ring was sold back to us a few years ago after the original owner passed away. Mrs. Fink was given the ring as an engagement gift from her beau and they married just before he had to serve in World War II. Mrs. Fink was unhappy with the fact that her beloved had to go to war. She was a very strong willed woman and dreaded the thought that she would lose her composure in front of someone upon receipt of the telegram war widows received. Supposedly, Mr. Fink warmed the ring with a kiss and promised her that she would know if something happened to her as the ring would grow cold. At one point, Mr. Fink was declared missing and presumed dead. Mrs. Fink never believed the reports because her ring was still warm. It turned out that she was correct. He was found three months later, a prisoner at a German PoW camp. When he returned home, he found work as a police officer. She never worried because her ring was always warm. The Finks celebrated their sixty-eighth anniversary before Mr. Fink passed away in two thousand and nine. Mrs. Fink stopped wearing the ring because she said that it was cold. She followed Mr. Fink less than a year later. Her family ultimately decided to sell the ring back to us as we’d always handled its maintenance for the elder Finks. They felt that Mrs. Fink would want the ring to go to someone as strong of will as she herself was.”

Kurt was sniffling into one of his pristine handkerchiefs. “That’s so beautiful.”

I just chuckled. “I don’t think there is another women as strong as my Lauren.”

Robert smiled. “We Argos are staunch Buckeye fans, so we know some of your story. I believe that Mr. Fink would applaud the ring being purchased by someone who loved his strong willed woman as much as he had loved his.”

The ring was Lauren’s hard to find size. It was a substantial ring not some little bit of metal she’d feel as if she break looking at it hard. But I just wasn’t sure. “I recognize the art deco style of the ring. What metal is it and what size is the center stone?” Kurt asked to gather more information so I could get off the fence.

“The ring is an original art deco piece, from near the end of the era. The round cut center diamond is a full carat. Great-Uncle Howard was one of the first AGS certified jewelers in Ohio. According his notes in the ring’s maintenance file, the center stone was a rarity for the time. It was rated VVS-two, an F on the color scale, meaning it fell into the colorless spectrum, and of course it had an excellent cut. The two marquise cut side diamonds are of slightly lesser, but still outstanding quality for the time period and each weigh a little over a quarter of a carat. The rest of the remaining twenty, small diamonds combine to a full half carat and are all colorless as well.”

“How much?” I asked gruffly. “Sorry, just…from all your saying, I’m scared I’m going to have to, like, sell a kidney or something to be able to get it for her.”

“Well, it is a bit more expensive than some of the other rings on the table, but…not truly exorbitant.” James rushed to assure me.

Robert sighed. “This particular ring costs seven thousand, six hundred and seventy-six dollars. Plus tax. We will, of course, provide you with the appraisal documentation for insurance purposes at no extra charge.”

I took a deep breath. Burt and Kurt had both said to budget two months’ salary for the ring. That ring was about twelve hundred more than I had budgeted. But, I did have the money. It wasn’t as if I would regret the purchase. Unless…”What if she says no?” I suddenly blurted out.

“We can accept a return of jewelry for up to sixty days after the date of purchase.” James soothed.

Kurt just swatted me across the back of the head. He spent way too much time with Mercedes and Santana. “Lauren is not going to say no. Not at this point.” He chided, “Don’t put that kind of negativity into the universe.”

I did it. I bought the ring. Then I made Kurt buy me lunch on the grounds that the ring cost more than I thought it would and I still needed to get a hotel and plane tickets, because I wasn’t going to feel like driving twelve hours in one weekend. He knew I was laying it all on thick, but he paid for lunch anyway. Probably it was more to apologize for how many stores he’d dragged me to, but I took it. Puck, Sam and Mercedes must have hired like the best people ever because, Mr. Haja had sent me a list of hotels and restaurants near the Scottrade Center arranged by price brackets. The body of the email read, ‘Mr. Hudson, you seemed adamant to do this yourself as is right and proper. But I figured a jumping off point couldn’t hurt. Best of luck, Haja Johnston, MBA Personal Manager, KAMA’. I sent him a thank you note quick fast and in a hurry.

I had a lot of free time with Lauren gone that week so I could really get everything planned out. After Kurt and Puck and his crew all headed back to New York and their tour, Vince and I met with the Laura’s tee shirt connection and we planned it all out. I didn’t choose the black going for the darkest charcoal they had available instead. I did go with a tealish blue color for the silk screening on the front and a deep, almost black shade of gray that almost faded into the shirt itself on the back. The front simply said I LOVE YOU, PLEASE MARRY ME. It was done in a sporty font called SF Sports Night, while the back was the personal message from Finnie to his Ma’am. That one was in a swirly, harder to read font called Amira Beauty. I booked us flights flying out of Columbus on Friday evening after work and going back Tuesday morning. None of the parents, also known as our employers, minded us taking the extra day since it saved me over a hundred and fifty bucks. Which I was glad to save, because that was just about as much as one night in our hotel room. I forked out for the ‘weekend getaway’ package at the St. Louis Union Station Hotel just four blocks from the arena. It was great, the one king bed room came with breakfast every morning, their premium Wi-Fi and a late check out. It was about eight hundred bucks for the whole stay, after the taxes and everything…but it was worth it. Lauren Zizes could not live in a world with bad Wi-Fi, even for a weekend, and their premium Wi-Fi rate outside the package was pretty ridic. So, yeah, it was completely worth it. I hadn’t realize that taxes would be almost as much as a one night in the room…yeesh.

It also cost, like, a lot of money every day for parking, so I figured it would be cheaper to take a taxi back and forth between the airport and the hotel and then just go places that were in walking distance from the hotel for lunch and dinner. Our hotel and the arena were both right downtown, so we could walk to a lot of places without a problem. I figured that we could just walk around, explore and do what caught our fancy. Lauren still needed to lose some more weight to before the first qualifying rounds for the Olympics and she was determined to make it. If all went well she would be competing at the Pan American Qualification tournament for her place in the Olympics. I was so proud of her strength and determination. I knew that the world thought that Mercedes was the only Diva in our crew. They just didn’t realize all the New Direction girls were Divas in their own rights and avenues. My Elle’s was dominating men in her favorite sport. And dominating me in our love life. It was great.

I didn’t want to create one of those itinerary things like what Hudson makes for us whenever we go anywhere with Commune, but I did want to plan things out at least a little, so I made a map and a printout of the cool things to do within a mile of our hotel. I had my stuff together. I went to this print place and printed things out on some ‘better than invoice sheets from Burt’s shop’ paper and put it all in a great black and teal swirly folder they had. Unfortunately, I finished all of that on that same Thursday after work. Lauren wasn’t getting back from camp until late that Sunday evening. I still had all weekend to miss my girlfriend. Well, not all weekend. I did work at Hummel and Sons, and I played some Sims. And Lauren called me Friday night and I managed to get through our whole half hour conversation without spilling the beans.

Not telling Lauren everything was as hard as waiting for her birthday to tell her anything about something so major. I realized that me and Elle talked about every detail of our day. Having a secret was way different. Keeping one for two weeks ended up taking a major family effort. Thank goodness for Vince and our parents. When we’d gotten back to Lima, we’d set ourselves up with a routine to get Lauren down to her weight requirement and Vince was serious about getting into peak condition for the fall. That routine was vital in the weeks before Elle’s birthday. Without it, I’d have blabbed for sure. Our days started early. Usually I was over at the Zizes by six. A lot of days Jake and a few of his guys met us there and joined us for at least the run. Roderick was, surprisingly, the most dedicated of the PPS crew. The more I got to know him…the more I had to admit that Jake was right about that guy. He was exactly what I’d have expected of Artie and Lauren mixed into one person. We ran to the high school, Lauren hated running, but she had a goal. I respected that about her. Coach Beiste and Coach Fisher had made an agreement with Coach Sylvester that allowed us to use the weight room and gym for training. Of course, Coach Sue brought in some of her weaker Cheerios to work on their strength training while we were there. She figured that if Coach Fisher was helping us, he could help her people at the same time.

But, she did come out to supervise pretty often, at least in the beginning. It was during one of her supervising sessions that I really started to understand what Kurt and Mercedes and Quinn and Tana always meant when they said that Coach Sue took care of those she respected…she just didn’t respect everybody. There were six Cheerios there two of the girls and four of the guys. The two girls, it was like they were going out of their way to say hurtful things when Lauren was near enough to hear them whispering. “Yeah, it’s about time she tried to slim her fat ass down. That bitch is wide as all outside. I think she’s even bigger than my sister said she used to be.”

That was just stupid, Lauren had been making lower and lower weight classes for the last three semesters. But before I could say a word, Elle shot me a look that clearly told me to keep my mouth shut. The two chicks just kept saying their stupid stuff…they never even realized that Coach Sylvester had come up behind them. “And you two ditz-brains wonder why you’ll never be on the A-Squad. Zizes doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about your opinions of her or her body. Tubbers over there can’t seem to get enough of her if the way he keeps hiding his little stiffie every time she smiles at him is any indication. The only reason she is in this gym working half her ass off is because she is going to bring prestige to this town by making the US Olympic team and going on to win the gold. The closest you’ll come to gold in life is digging for it in your well to do husband’s wallet.”

I was pretty sure that we all stopped in shock and awe. Coach Sylvester never-ever put a non-Cheerio above a Cheerio. Unless the ‘non’ was a prospective or former one…at least not as far as I knew. Elle just smiled and thanked the cheerleading coach and principal. “Just make sure you qualify and you win some gold. The more popular McKinley gets, the easier it is for me to bend the school board to my will.” Coach Sylvester shot back.

Ever since the day that all happened, we hadn’t had much more trouble out of those Cheerios or any of their buddies that Sue brought in for conditioning. When Lauren came back from the wrestling camp where she’d used some of her lawsuit money to pay for a fairly intense weight meeting package, she was down to two hundred…which meant she only needed to lose another twenty-five pound to make the Olympic women’s freestyle top weight class. She looked different…I mean she still looked like her, but a lot slimmer and more defined. Still, at the same time, she was still my Ma’am and Vince’s Elle and her parent’s Lauren. I struck me as strange how one person could be glaringly different and yet so very the same. I guessed it was because the only changes were in the Lauren people saw and not who Lauren really was. It was weird. She was really happy and more determined than ever to get those final pounds gone. So, the very next day, we were back to our workout at the school with some change to our company. The four male Cheerios had long since made the improvements Coach Sylvester demanded of them and were released back into the wild to enjoy their summers, as long as they kept up the ability to lift two hundred pounds until the cheer competition season started. They had been replaced by four younger male Cheerios who needed to increase their strength. The two girls were still the same ones. Coach Sylvester and Coach Fisher were both very unhappy with their failure to meet the benchmarks that had been set for them. Lauren, however, found it hilarious.

“You chicks have been working out for like six weeks and you still can’t bench your own measly weights. I’ve been benching a hundred and fifty pounds since I was in eighth grade. Now, I legit bench and dead lift more than the two of you combined.” She positively chortled. I never knew what that word really meant until I watched the beautiful woman who loved me laughing dead into those Cheerios’ faces.

“Yeah, right,” the mouthier of the two shot back. “No way can you dead lift three hundred pounds.”

Vince, Elle, Coach Fisher and I all rolled our eyes and shook our heads. But it was Coach Sylvester who spoke. “Pasty Brady, you willing to put your money where your mouth is?” She threw out. I was almost positive the girl’s name was Janice Danforth…but Coach Sylvester didn’t really bother to learn the names of anyone she considered unworthy.

The idiot didn’t have the sense not to say yes. Instead she tried to act like she wasn’t scared to find out what that actually meant. “Sure. Why not?”

“Alright, if your right and Zizes can’t lift three hundred and ten pounds right now, and I’ll bump you up to the A-line Cheerios and to the top of the pyramid. If I’m right and she can…you and your mouth breathing buddy there never darken my squad or my gym again.”

“I…I…I,” she babbled before straightening her spine and accepting the bet. Of course, she and her friend Gretchen, left the gym crying. No longer Cheerios at all. They were replaced the very next day by two girls who eagerly looked to Lauren for advice in getting their own strength to where their Coach wanted it.

During our runs and our workouts, Vince helped me not blab the news every day while we were all working out. Thankfully, I had to be showered, dressed and back to the shop by eight for my shift, so there was no time to ruin the secret in the mornings. Her dad often joined us for lunch, so he helped me not to say anything stupid during that hour or so. But, Elle and I made it a point to spend time together after work every day. I made it a grand total of three days of Lauren and my alone time in the evenings before I told her that I had a huge secret planned for her birthday and was having a really hard time not just telling her everything.

She laughed and kissed me. “You know what…I knew you were holding something back. A birthday surprise is a good thing. I give you my permission to keep the secret until my birthday.” She told me and suddenly…just like that, holding the secret inside myself became so much easier.

After that, it seemed like I blinked, and we were all gathered at the ‘Old Barn out Back’ to celebrate Lauren’s twentieth birthday. I knew she was smart, but it always seemed so weird that she’d skipped grades and everything. Over a protein heavy, carb and sugar light dinner, her parent, Vince, Netta, my parents, and I all gave Lauren the gifts we’d gotten her to celebrate the anniversary of her birth. Her mom and Dad got her a brand new fully loaded iMac Pro. Burt and Mom got her a big, bold, FitBit, super smart watch thingy that tracked her steps and calories burned and heart rate and everything. Kurt sent her a really cute outfit in her new sizes and everything. There were some of the Curvy Girl Jeans she liked, black rather than just the color jeans usually were, a fitted white tank top with a black leather biker looking, half jacket thing that made Lauren look really bad ass. I kind of expected some boots, but in the bottom of the box was a pair of flat black sandals. There was a note on them that reminded her it was summer, and she should go get a pedicure. The whole outfit would go great with what he’d sent me to include with my gift. Netta had gotten her a gift certificate to Jewels…which would cover the cost of a mani-pedi. Vince got her a weird looking thing that Elle almost lost her plot over. “You got me a DJI Osmo plus…are you crazy? This is awesome!” she said happily, before explaining to the rest of us that it was basically an action shot camera. “It’s great, because its small enough not kill me when I’m trying to get action shots, but it shoots in 4K.”

I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only person at the table pretending to know what she meant. Vince didn’t even seem to know what it meant. “Yeah, but it’s not just from me. Your boy Artie helped me figure out what to get you and we went half on it.”

Lauren laughed. “I guess I’ll cut him some slack since he’s got a mortgage now.” She teased, and I knew Artie would hear every cheap Jew joke Elle could get away with taunting him with later on. She wasn’t racist or anything. She just loved to bust his chops and get under his skin. Nothing got under his skin like anything even borderline anti-Semitic, which made sense. “He’s lucky his wives made up for it with a freaking rainbow of Mac lipsticks.”

“What did your other friends get you?” Mom asked curiously.

Lauren laughed. “Well, Puck sent me an autographed picture of The Undertaker and Paul Bearer and the Undertaker and Paul Bearer WWF Special Edition WrestleMania XV Wrestling Figures set, Mint in box, also autographed.”

Ben and I both stopped and blinked a few times. “Wow.” I finally breathed.

“Shoosh yeah.” Elle and Ben both agreed. Ben explained for those who didn’t watch professional wrestling. “Paul Bearer was The Undertaker’s manage forever…even when he wasn’t visibly there in the later years of Taker’s career, it was still understood that Paul Bearer,”

“Taker and Kane’s bio-daddy and manager.” Lauren chimed in.

Ben nodded. “Exactly, it was understood that he was there in the background making The Undertaker and Kane more powerful due to his ties to the arcane arts. Well, the real guy died in twenty-thirteen. Any autographed picture of him and Kane or him and Taker skyrocketed on the collectables market. Those action figures, still in mint condition in their original packaging with the signatures…to a wrestling fan they’re…”

“Priceless,” Elle finished. “Though on the open market…unless I managed to start a bidding war, probably they would only pull about five or six hundred easy. Of course, that’s nothing compared to what Ms. Jones and Evans gave me. Mainly, Mercedes, though Sam probably put his name on it to, so I wouldn’t feel like it was too much from her. So in the envelope she sent me, I got round trip tickets for me and Finn to go to New York for a weekend before school starts, and either Ruth or Kurt will take me on a shopping trip with a budget of two grand. Have I mentioned that I love our friends?” she chuckled. Lauren was really smart and she could be compassionate and loving and all that stuff, but at her heart, she was kind of greedy. Then again at my heart I tended to be a vengeful asshole, so neither of us were perfect. Nor did we pretend to be. She turned to me with a grabby motion. “So, what did you get me?” Cheezus I loved her.

I gave her the box containing a vintage, black and white, The Undertaker, women’s racerback tank top, and the folder detailing our travel information for the following weekend. “Here you go. Thank you for helping me to keep the secret.” I laughed.

She looked at the shirt first, “Whoa, this looks like it…” she looked at the tag. “Wow. Real deal, original swag. The tag even says WWF not WWE. Wicked cool.” She said happily. Then she pulled out and opened the folder. On the very top rested the print-out from Southwest telling her about the flights. I’d actually gone all out and gotten the ‘Business Select’ boarding upgrade. They didn’t have first class…not that I’d have spent that much…probably I wouldn’t. Lauren was smiling, but she looked confused. Then she saw the reservation sheet for the hotel and her smile got bigger and brighter as things started making sense to her. When she looked beyond that and found the tickets for the pay-per-view, she gave me a HUGE smile and a big hug and then showed everyone what my surprise had been. Not that they didn’t already know. “Finn Hudson, if I wasn’t already determined to have your kid…later in life, like way later…I would so be there now. This is awesome. Thank you!” The kiss she laid on me was long and deep and, damn, it made me hate the fact that we only got to have serious alone time one night a week.

Thankfully, our work week went by pretty quickly. I got to help rebuild a transmission. Lauren got to design and install an entire system for the daycare center that was opening in the office plaza. We were both really happy with our summer jobs. Lauren was thinking that maybe it was time she got herself a car. I was perfectly happy to drive her wherever she needed to go, but she raised a good point about her desire for independence and the fact that eventually the need would be greater and greater. I was wondering if we should look into getting our own place. I missed being able to come home and turn everything over to Ma’am and just be. Friday evening, we left Lima at four and made the familiar hour and a half drive to Columbus. We had less than an hour to wait on our flight and got to board early and had pretty great seats for our builds. Plus, the free cocktails weren’t bad…though Lauren and I both got cokes rather than anything alcoholic. The flight was only about as long as the drive from Lima to the airport. Since it was rush hour, the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel took twice as long as it should have, but it wasn’t horrible.

Check in at the hotel…now that was horrible. They’d somehow lost the reservations. Never mind that I’d double checked them on Wednesday. Then when I showed them all the information I’d gotten via email confirming everything…they didn’t have any more regular rooms. I was so angry, I literally turned to Lauren and asked her, “Weren’t Puck, Sam and Cedes planning to stay here later this week when they are here for their show at the Chaifetz Center?” I was taking a chance. It had been the first name on Mr. Haja’s list…I was guessing at the reason for that, but Lauren just rolled with me. She was so awesome.

“I think so…” She texted somebody. “Yup, them and their whole crew. Hudson says they are scheduled to be here for three nights before they head to Champagne.”

I looked at the guy behind the desk. “Do I need to call my best friend since we were in kindergarten…a guy who is so much my brother that he failed the first grade on purpose because I hadn’t learned to read yet…and tell him that you people lost our reservation and had no rooms left for us tonight?”

The dude looked like he was too scared to breathe. His manager hip checked him to the side and in minutes had easily verified that I was the same Finn Hudson from the accident that made national news only because of my connection to KAMA and then we were upgraded to a King Deluxe Junior Suite for the same cost as the one king room I’d originally booked. We still had the breakfast and premium Wi-Fi included so I was happy. The room was big as fuck with a living room and separate bedroom and a really nice bathroom…so Lauren was happy. Not long after we got into the room, and tipped the bellhop. We used a bellhop and everything. That was really cool. Anyway, we got settled and were kind of making out at the couch, when there was a knock on the door. The manager was there with a FedEx box and a pretty restaurant receipt folder in his other hand. “I am sorry, this arrived for you this afternoon. There was so much trouble at your check in, it was almost forgotten. I apologize. Please accept dinner tonight with my complements. You can call down and order whatever you like and give them this certificate when they arrive.”

“Thank you.” I told him after I passed the box to Lauren. “Look, I’m sorry about making a scene down there…it’s just, this weekend is really…really important.” I confided once I was sure she was distracted with checking out the FedEx delivery. 

Dude guy must have been really smart because he seemed to get why immediately. “Oh, of course sir. Should I have some champagne sent up?”

I shook my head. “I’m not doing it until Sunday evening, so, maybe then. We don’t really drink but maybe some of that non-alcoholic sparkling stuff that feels like champagne but isn’t.”

He smiled. “I see. I’ll be working Sunday night, I’ll make a note to have some sent up then. Have a great evening.”

I closed and locked the door behind him and went to see what the box held. Elle gave me a serious kiss and showed me the card that had been included in the package. “It’s from Brandon and ‘Netta. They figured that we wouldn’t really be able to bring any toys with us so they sent this ahead. They said we can send it back to ourselves before we go home so we don’t have to try and get everything through airport security.”

It wasn’t a huge box. But it was big enough to contain a couple of bottles of Ma’am’s preferred kind of lube and a really cool looking cockring with a leather ball cage. Ma’am loved cockrings. To be honest, I did too. There was also a small butt plug and a hard paddle and a soft flogger. Brandon had also included my favorite of all the things he’d directed us to. It was a sensory deprivation play kit that contained a blackout blindfold, a pair of Bluetooth, noise canceling headphones and these cuff that were strong enough to restrain me, but almost seem to disappear once they were on my wrists and ankles. “We have the best friends.” I told her sincerely.

Even though nothing had changed from one second to the next, everything had changed. I could tell that Lauren and even Elle had left the building and it was my beloved Mistress standing in front of me. Ma’am’s head was held high, her shoulders thrown back, her spine straight and solid. Her eyes were even more focused and totally determined. “Go in the bathroom and take a quick shower. Pay special attention to your cock, balls and asshole. When you’ve finished, dry off then bring a towel out and spread it on the floor next to the bed. You will kneel on the towel. If you’re still in position when I have finished my shower, you will have earned a reward.”

“Yes Ma’am.” I uttered in a quiet tone. Not a lot of people would have believed that I could move that fast off a football field. But I could, and I always did…just for her though. I did as I was told. I wasn’t a huge fan of butt play, but that was mainly because, well, I knew it was wrong for me to feel that way. But, yeah, I didn’t like how much I liked it. Ma’am, she liked pressing my boundaries in safe ways. I’d never needed my safe words, so she knew it was a hang up…not an actual problem. I washed carefully but I didn’t play with myself. If Ma’am had wanted me to rub one out, she’d have told me so. After I showered, I dried every part of my body, even managed to get the middle of my back I usually wouldn’t have bothered with. I didn’t put anything on my skin…not even deodorant. Ma’am’s tongue didn’t like lotions anything like that. I made sure that there were enough and then took one of the fresh towels out and spread it on the floor by the side of the bed closest to the bathroom. After I put on my collar and wrist cuffs from my lone carry-on bag, I knelt there with my hands behind my back, adjusting until I was comfortable. Then I held that pose.

In the quiet moments like that, my mind started to notice the strangest things. My nose twitched with the scents of the scented air of the hotel room and the stronger but sort of buried scents of the cleaners the maids used. The strange smell even the best vacuum cleaners left behind, Amish wood soap…things like that. I could feel the winds caused by the air conditioner against me everywhere. I was glad I’d made sure that I dried off well. Wet skin and AC was a combination that sucked major ass. I listened carefully as the strong spray of the shower beat against Ma’am’s more toned form. It may have been a trick of the zone I was in, but I was sure that I could tell when she turned and it was hitting her back rather than her boobs and stomach. I was so deep in the zone, the water shutting off surprised me.

Thank Cheezus I didn’t move because just as I was getting my breathing back under control, Lauren breezed back into the room in one of the robes that had been in the bathroom for our use. She went into the living room where our luggage still was. It could have been ten minutes, it could have been a thousand. I didn’t move except to breathe. When she came back in, I heard her moving around and moved just my eyes. She looked so hot. She was wearing a black, satin and lace baby doll nighty thing and a tiny little patch of shiny material and string for panties. Ma’am loved being in ourselves as much as I did, but for her a big part of it was freedom. I think that was why she only rarely did leather or boots or anything like that. She had gotten a pedicure, though, her toenails were a bright ass, hot pink. Then I was seeing nothing as she slipped the blackout blindfold over my eyes.

For the next several minutes, she only used unspoken commands. I moved where she led without saying anything myself. I ended up flat on my back on the bed, my wrists bound to the frame. The headphones in my ears quietly played a playlist Lauren had created of our sex sounds set to some of KAMA’s sultriest music. At some point Ma’am must have synced it to her Bluetooth headset because once she had me laying as she wanted me, I heard her voice in my ear, “Such a good boy Finnie.”

The bed sunk as she joined me. Her mouth went to work, kissing and teasing me. Her tongue traveling anywhere she wanted. I was hard as a rock, long before she ever reached my dick. She still sucked me until I thought I would go crazy…then she carefully looped the ball cage-slash-separator over my balls, lifting and separating them before she fastened the cockring around the base of my dick. “Roll over so I can give you your reward.”

It was probably easier than most people thought to roll over when you’re tied down to a bed, as long as the chains are long enough, and your ankles aren’t tied too. Then again, maybe it was just something that I had more practice at than most people. When I was face down, with my dick rubbing into the soft sheets of the bed, Ma’am’s hands pulled gently on my hips until I pulled them up, bringing my knees up spreading my ass wide. I wasn’t gagged, but Finnie time was a ‘don’t speak until told time’, so I said nothing when she praised me again. I was rewarded for real. Ma’am gave my balls, dick and asshole a delicate tongue bath. It felt so amazing. If she hadn’t put the cockring on me before she started I’d have exploded all over the place within minutes after she started. I couldn’t hear myself so I didn’t realize that I was saying my thoughts rather than just thinking them. I was begging and thanking her and reminding her that I’d been good and that it was a reward. I wanted to cum so bad. I shut up when Ma’am’s voice cut into my thoughts. “Finnie, are you trying to tell me what to do?”

“No Ma’am.” I groaned out. “I just really want to cum.” I said rather than thought again. “Oh shit.” I blurted out. I knew better…when we did sensory deprivation play, I wasn’t allowed to speak until spoken to. I was never allowed to back talk.

“’Oh, shit’ is right. Did I ask you what you wanted?”

“No Ma’am.” I whispered.

“Have I ever not taken care of you, Finnie?”

“No Ma’am.” I said honestly.

“Do you really think that I wasn’t going to allow you to cum?”

“No Ma’am.” My voice was barely loud enough to be heard.

“Should you be punished?”

“Yes Ma’am.” I was still quiet, but that was because the thought of getting paddled was really hot.

“I was going to play a while longer…but we both know that once I turn your ass red, you’ll be cumming no matter what. So, I’m going to play to my heart’s content…then I’ll punish you.”

The next however long was the longest, most intensely pleasurable however long in my entire twenty-two years. Ma’am, licked and sucked my ass until I was biting the pillow just to make sure my mouth didn’t get me into any more trouble. Then I felt it. She’d warmed up the silicone of the butt plug somehow. It was slick and thin…thinner than my or Ma’am’s fingers. It wasn’t even all that long…but it was long enough to push against what Elle called my P-Spot. I could feel my asshole gripping the toy and the wide base of it pressed against my puckered hole. Without words, I was directed to flip back onto my back and moved quite a bit slower than I had to get into that position. I didn’t have to worry about my mouth getting in me trouble after I was on my back again. Ma’am’s sweet, wet, pussy kept me quiet. And really happy. I got her off eight times with my lips and tongue. It still seemed a little weird that she always gave me a set of numbers that I had to give her a number of orgasms between the two numbers. Often it was three to seven, but sometimes it was six to nine. I tended to pay attention until I got to at least the lowest number then I just teased and played until I was told to stop.

I wasn’t surprised when I had to roll back over. I knew that my punishment was still coming. And boy did Ma’am let me have it. The paddle Brandon and Netta had sent was fur lined on one side and hard leather on the other. I got four smacks with the fur first and then she went to work turning my ass red. That only took her eight good wallops. At the same time, she started licking my butt, she undid the cock ring. “Cum now!” I could barely catch my breath after I finally stopped cumming. I came that hard. But it was so intense that I actually stayed hard. The intensity scared me a little. “Good Finnie…now. I’m going to take this harness off you and you’re going to take off your collar and cuffs. We’ll clean up the bed and shower. Then I want you to make love to me. That work for you?”

I kissed her gently. “Yes. Ma’am.”

I loved that woman, every single part of her. She was my future and I had never looked forward to it more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear American Politicians,   
> Thoughts & Prayers are no longer enough...they never have been. As the Good Book says, Faith without WORKS is dead. (James 2:17)   
> We the American people are through burying our families and our children because you're so busy sucking on the NRA teat that you cannot and will not do your jobs.   
> Please know that November is coming. 
> 
> Dear Remaining Readers,  
> Thank you for your thoughts & prayers...and your comments and reviews.   
> Let me know what you think & feel about this world, story, chapter...any and all of the above.   
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	21. Not a Bad Thing (Justin Timberlake)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elle Boogie aka Lauren's Take on Summer 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her beta reading awesomeness.

Chapter 20

Not a Bad Thing (Justin Timberlake)  
Lauren PoV

I was having what was simultaneously the happiest and hardest summer of my life. It was happy because I was happy. I had enough money in the bank that I’d had to invest some so that I wouldn’t run afoul of the FDIC limits. I would have more in the fall after my scholarships all hit the comptroller’s office and got refunded to me. Puck had put me in touch with his uncle…who was totally outside our league. I’d done some research and Saul Mayzer was strictly BIG MONEY. The fact that he was willing to help piddily investors like me and Finn…was only because we were tight with his nephew. But I was not one to not take every advantage life gave me. After all, I was stuck with the fourth biggest natural hurdle it could give. I wasn’t a black male, a male of color or a woman of color so I wasn’t born as far behind the eight ball as I could have been…but even being a White woman rather than a White man meant that I would have to fight harder and work harder to achieve my dreams. Thankfully, my creator had seen fit to make me one of the most stubborn people ever.

She had also made me pretty damn smart. And it didn’t take a genius to realize that the second Mrs. Paley had paid us for her husband’s crimes, Finn Hudson had started thinking hard about replacing the cute little promise ring he’d given me for Christmas with an actual engagement ring as soon as possible. That left me in an emotional conundrum. I’d believed that I would have more time to decide how I should answer him before he popped the question. I talked a good game about how sure I was about him and I belonging together for the rest of our lives and putting rings on things, but I was just as scared as any not quite twenty-one-year-old would be at the thought of forever. As a wise man once said, ‘Forever, that’s a mighty long time’. As soon as we got home I realized that if I was going to have to make that decision sometime in the next hundred and four days…I needed to get my thoughts together. The best way I knew to do that when thinking about emotions and that whole bullshitty hornet’s nest was to talk to my mother.

Mom wasn’t like other moms. She rode, maintained, repaired and sold Harleys…other choppers too but Harleys were her favorites. She dressed like a biker chick on her relaxed days and a higher priced madam on her dressy ones. She was awesome and never failed to make her family feel like the center of her world. She hated cooking and being tied to a kitchen though. I agreed with her on that one. But one area where she was as traditional a mother as any ever…she was the parent to go to for discussions of emotions or to unravel feelings. I was not a procrastinator by nature. Not about major things anyway. So the second week after Vince and I got home, I asked Mom if we could have lunch or something just the two of us. “Sure, Meelaya, why don’t I make us appointments for Jewels for this Saturday, we can have a mother-daughter spa day.”

I agreed even though I knew that would mean waxing. Momma swore by it. It did last longer, but there was nothing that could ever convince me that the tradeoff was worth it. Still, I pulled on my big girl panties and sat through the beautification rituals with my mother when she wanted me to. She got us in later Saturday afternoon after she and Vince closed the store at five. Mom had seen a serious bump in business since she’d hired Vince that first summer. Apparently, bikers could be a little racist…not all of them, but enough that Black bikers didn’t fuck with White biker places until they knew for sure. Once they realized that Momma not only wasn’t racist, but she wouldn’t let that bullshit into her store or shop, every black biker in northwestern Ohio who wasn’t in Toledo or Dayton started checking her shop out. A lot of them became regular customers. They found that Momma was a harmless flirt who never wanted them, but made them feel like she did…so for them it was a safe place in more than one way.

When we got to Jewels, Momma and I did the whole spa shower thing, then were shown in for facials. “So, what’s on your mind, Kotik.” She asked me as Sofia started working on her face and Ulyana went to work on me.

I sighed. “I think Finn’s getting ready to ask me to marry him?”

“Oh, is that all? That boy…young man…wanted to ask you at Christmas. He just didn’t feel that he could with the kind of ring he could afford at the time.” She laughed.

“But Momma…I don’t know what to say when he asks me.”

All three of the other women in the room stopped and looked at me. I rolled my eyes. At least it was just the two of us and the two spa matrons there. They had a code about gossiping about the patrons…they would do so amongst themselves, but never outside their crew and never in English. I’d asked Greta about it senior year. “It is a yes or no question, Lauren.”

My sigh spoke volumes. “I know that Momma. But we haven’t even finished college. We have no life experiences. What if we get married based on our current relationship and then he decides that he doesn’t want what we have anymore? What if I decide that I don’t? What if he decides that he wants a skinny girl? What if I decide that I want a different guy? How, at twenty, can I be expected to make a decision that will follow me for the entire rest of my life?”

All three of them laughed at me. Hard. “Meelaya, you’re wanting assurances that your life will be perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect life. As for your last question, you’ve already started doing that at eighteen. You don’t think that what college you go to is a major decision that will follow you for the rest of your life? What you need to ask yourself is whether you meant what you said when you were up on that witness stand a few weeks ago.”

“Of course, I meant it. I meant it then and I still mean it now…but what if five years from now, ten years from now I stop meaning it.” I said cautiously.

Ulyana tapped my cheek. “You’re a cautious person, Lauren Zizes. You’re more scared of pain than you are of anything else, yes. You try to avoid it more than any other person who’s sat in our chairs. But life is pain. You cannot live and avoid pain any more than you can avoid breathing or peeing or pooping. Your Dr. Martin Luther the King…he said, ‘We must substitute courage for caution.’ That is what you must do.”

“Bah,” Sofia interjected. “She needs to ask herself what scares her more…maybe losing him later or definitely losing him sooner. That is how I lost my Uri. I wanted to wait. We were too young. What did we know from living? He found girl who trusted him enough not to doubt her heart.”

Momma nodded. “Do you love Finn?”

“More than I ever thought I would. He is not at all who I thought I would end up with.” I said honestly.

“Yeah, well, I’ve said it a million times. Big Show is married.” She teased gently. “Lots of people marry exactly who they thought was their perfect type. Then they end up miserable. Later they find that who they thought they should want wasn’t anything like who they needed. Do you need Finn in your life? Can you see a future where you are with someone else?”

“Not unless he decided he wanted to watch.” I muttered.

I got two and a half side-eyes. Momma’s was only half of one because she had more information than our aestheticians. “They say it’s not good to explore your wants and desires with the man you’re going to marry…but that makes no sense to me. You might as well make sure that he can please you in the bedroom and you don’t have fake things or hide things.” Sofia finally said thoughtfully.

“Yes, but what if he no longer respects you once you’ve been all marevnyy in the bedroom.” Ulyana argued.

Momma answered for Sofia. “Then he wasn’t the one for you anyway. If he can’t respect you for being a woman who has wants and desires and needs…then he doesn’t respect you in the first place. Every human being had those.” She said wisely. “I dated a guy like that before I met your father. He really and truly believed that the female orgasm was a myth created by Cosmo to give women unrealistic expectations of men. As you can guess, I didn’t date him long.”

I laughed. “Finn may not be the brightest bulb in the world, but he knows better than that. I have no doubt that he respects me…almost as much as he does his mom. Granted, he doesn’t fear me anymore. I used to scare him more than any other chick…even Sue Sylvester, Tana and Cedes.”

“Respect is better than fear.” Sofia and Ulyana said at almost the same instant.

“Do you want to marry your Finn?” Sofia asked me. I couldn’t hold back a smile at the very thought. No amount of fear or uncertainty could over shadow my true feelings on that subject. “Then you know your answer.”

We did move on to other topics after that. They had said what they wanted to say. I only wished it was that easy for me. I would be sure and then a thought would hit me out of nowhere, and the worry and doubt would come swooping back in. Funnily enough, I never had a moment of doubt when I was with Finn. In those moments surety wasn’t a strong enough word for what I experienced. At least the summer offered me not just time and energy to work out like I needed to in order to be able to meet the weight requirements for the Olympic trials, but it offered us time together where we were able to talk about my concerns. Even if I didn’t admit I was having them.

As far as Finn was concerned, we were just talking about the future. “So, where do you see yourself in five years?” I asked him one of the mid-June evenings when we’d only had time to talk.

He shrugged. “I guess that kind of depends. I mean, we’ll be where ever you need us to be. I can teach wherever, I can even coach wherever. Plus, twenty-twenty will be another Summer Olympics…so you’ll need to be in training.”

It made me feel both awesomely good and kind of nauseated that he was building his future around me and I was doubting that we even had a future. “Well, where do you want to live?”

He thought about that for a minute. “Well, the South or the Midwest tend to be the most serious about high school football. I think if we do move to the South, we should try to live near the beach. Georgia seems to pay their high school football coaches the best though.” He said honestly. “I was reading online and they have over twenty school districts where the head coaches make more than a hundred grand a year. I know I wouldn’t start off as a head coach, but I’m sure that I could get there in five to ten seasons.”

“Why high school? You don’t want to be the next Urban Meyer or Nick Saban or Steve Spurrier?” I teased.

He shook his head. “Naw, I want to make a real difference. Help people like Coach Beiste helped me and Coach Taylor was there for Vince. You know Coach Meyer is awesome, and I’m learning so much from him…but I think by then the assholishness is too deeply rooted in most guys.”

We started a laugh, mainly because he wasn’t lying. “What about Kids? And don’t lie and say you don’t want a couple.”

Finn laughed at me. “Hey, I would never lie…not about something that important. But we’ll have plenty of time to have kids of our own. When I make head coach, we can adopt. Then when you’re ready to stop competing we can have a couple of our own.”

“Competing?”

He smirked. “Well, you want to get to the Olympics. Once you’ve made the team, you’re not going to stop until you have a gold medal. But just one probably won’t be enough so you’ll continue to compete until you’ve had at least two maybe three if you can manage it. Now, the way I figure it, then you’ll probably transition from Olympic Wrestling to professional wrestling. With gold medals and being tight with music stars, the McMahons would be crazy to let TNT scoop you up. You’ll compete in the WWE until you’ve won and defended the Heavyweight championship a time or two to prove that you aren’t a novelty act or a one hit wonder. Knowing you, you might just hit the WWE after we graduate if you the Olympic gold isn’t enough to keep you amateur for four extra years. By the time you’re thirty-five, you’ll probably feel bored and want to be home with me and the biracial and multiracial kids we’ve adopted. Then you’ll be ready to transition into filmmaking. We can have our first while you’re doing Commune and Tana’s music videos to knock the rust off. We can have our second after you’re nominated for your first Golden Globe or whatever.”

“Sounds like you’ve given it a lot of thought.” I finally said when I was able to speak. The life he’d just described sounded pretty much perfect.

He pulled me close. “Those are my happy thoughts when home work is hard or some of the guys on the team are assholes.”

I shook my head a little bit. “Yeah, but you didn’t say it like it was just happy thoughts…you said it like you believe it.” I said quietly.

“Of course, I believe it. I believe in you.”

That conversation stayed with me all through wrestling camp. It worked better than anything else ever had to quell my hunger pangs. It helped me to realize that I may have said I was having doubts, but what I was really having were insecurities. I knew I was a strong, independent woman who didn’t need a man. Yeah, I might not have needed a man…but I did need Finn Hudson. That camp was harder than I’d ever experienced before, but I went to it knowing that I didn’t just have my own cockiness, my own confidence. I had the faith and belief of a man who loved me more than most people could ever quantify. When I got back, Finn was acting weird. But it wasn’t just him though, my whole family was weird. They barely let us have any time to ourselves. And half the time Finn opened his mouth to speak, one of them would jump in to finish his sentences. It was strange…and very suspicious. When he said that he was having trouble keeping my birthday present a secret, I started to tell him I knew what it was. But I didn’t I just gave him what he needed.

I had the bomb ass birthday. It wasn’t huge or anything crazy, just me and Finn and our families. Great dinner, I kept to my meal plan though…I was a determined broad. Opening gifts was my favorite part though. It always had been. I was a little shocked when Finn didn’t propose to me that night. A little shocked and a lot disappointed. Like Sofia had said all those weeks before…I knew my answer. I sure as hell wasn’t complaining. I would never not want to go to a WWE pay per view…even one of the lesser ones. I knew I would be rocking my gifts from Kurt and my ‘Taker tank top for the actual event, but I ended up having to go shopping to get some new clothes that actually fit my body again. I was down to an eighteen-twenty and didn’t own much below a twenty-four, so I needed to shop. I’d lucked out with my summer job that summer. I usually didn’t bother working, but Dad had big upped me to the rest of the parents for what I’d done for his website. I just lived in fear that he’d learn about the other website development I’d been doing for Cedes’ background singer Xena. Anyway, I was brought in as Amicitiae Amore’s IT tech for the businesses in their office park. They were paying me twenty grand for the summer and they let me off whenever I needed for my camps. No way was I saying no. Best of all for me that particular week, there were several stores that had what I needed in my budget right there in the Friendship Village Shopping Plaza. I just hit a different store every day. TJMaxx was Monday, Serendipity was Tuesday. The lingerie boutique, Adore Me, saw me Wednesday. Then Thursday, I hit Nine West, and the accessory stores. I was going on that weekend trip looking good. Friday, I took my lunch break at V&L Salon. When Finn picked me up, I was ready to go, and I was amazing.

The trip was easy. Checking into the hotel wasn’t as smooth, but it was managed. Finn and I got to be our truest selves for longer than an hour for the first time that whole summer. A hot shower allowed me to take care of Finnie. I washed him gently and then rubbed a nice thick cocoa butter lotion into his skin before we got dressed. Aftercare was so important to maintaining a sub’s trust and happiness. Then we had free room service. Their wings were awesome…they were fried after they were smoked though so I only had one and let Finn have the rest. My dinner consisted of a big ass salad with pan seared salmon. I was a little bit jealous of Finn’s BBQ pork steak, and roasted garlic smoked mashed potatoes, but I kept myself on the straight and narrow. Working our dinner off was a hell of a lot of fun. We didn’t even have to try to bother being quiet. When we woke in the middle of the night and wanted each other again, we took what we wanted. The next morning, we woke up late and showered together. Then I did my hair. We had a room service breakfast, and we went sightseeing. We visited the Old Courthouse, it was monumental. Then we took a tram to the observation deck. It was awesome. Then we went to the National Blues Museum. We had dinner on a Skyline Dinner Cruise that went down the Mississippi River and under the arch at sunset.

We went back to our room and made love and then we let Finnie and Ma’am out to play. That was big fun. Sunday, we had a pretty lazy day. We had breakfast, I blogged a little. We watched some TV. We did go to the fitness center and work out. Yeah, it was a vacation, but I was on a mission. The day before we’d walked a lot, so we took a day off from our usual hard work out. After we got showered, we dressed up for our evening. I put on my fly outfit and felt awesome. Finn put on a great pair of jeans, an almost black graphic tee that I didn’t get a chance to see what the graphic was. He’d put on an Undertaker "The Deadman Lives Eternal" varsity hoodie too quickly for me to see the tee-shirt. We had an early dinner at the Hard Rock Café and walked to the arena. Our seats were so freaking great that I almost couldn’t believe it. We were front row center, ringside, right behind the barrier. There was no way we wouldn’t be on the TV. We made it in time for the pre-show, I loved R-Truth. Even if he did have the Jones Twins hairstyle. I hated having to watch him lose to that smug ass Wade Barrett.

The show opened with Randy Orton versus Sheamus. This was definitely Finn’s match. He liked both guys. Near the end of the match, Sheamus got in a Brogue Kick on Orton, but wasn’t able to follow through. Sheamus fought off Orton's try at a RKO and turned that into the Texas Cloverleaf but Orton punked out and broke the hold by grabbing the ropes. They popped for the crown and got pumped up, then Orton executed an RKO and got a three count, winning the match. The vid of backstage was interesting…Stephanie McMahon was a trip to me. Next up was the Tag Team Championship, The Primetime Players and the New Day went head to head. They were always fun to watch. Titus O’Neil ended up winning the match for the Players. I loved JBL and Michael Cole’s commentary. Jerry ‘the King’ Lawler was hysterical. I had a love hate relationship with the DIVAs division. Mentally, I always held them up to icons like Mae Young & the Fabulous Moolah, or Chyna, Original Lita… hell even Trish Stratus to the chicks in the division now. Some of them were awesome wrestlers, but they didn’t seem to get the accolades they deserved.

The next match was between Bray Wyatt and Russev was a vicious back-and-forth with a lot of reversals and signature moves. In the end, a hooded person attacked Russev with a Superkick, which let Wyatt execute Sister Abigail for the win. It turned out that the hooded person as Luke Harper, to me that spoke of a Wyatt family reunion. Team BAD was all about the swag that night. It wasn’t a bad match…a three way between Sasha Banks, Charlotte and Brie Bella. There was some good back and forth. I was team Charlotte, just because she was Rick Flair’s kid. I was so happy she won…and damn that was a nice Figure Eight leg lock. It would have been nice if the commentators would finally make up their minds if the Bellas were supposed to be heels or babyfaces from week to week. I knew one thing. No one would ever convince me that they were unbeatable mega-heels. I felt bad for Sasha Banks…it was her first pay-per-view and she didn’t even get to come out to her own music. Cena versus Kevin Owens was my match of the night…at least to that point. Like their prior two encounters, it was another brutally vicious back-and-forth. We were entranced watching as Owens kicked out of three Attitude Adjustments, including one from the top rope. Finn grabbed my hand both times that Cena kicked out of Owens’ powerbombs. Then there was a total slug out. That was great to watch. KO executed an Attitude Adjustment and applied the STF on Cena, but, of course, Cena managed to break the hold. In the end, Owens submitted to the STF, which gave the win to Cena. Truth be told, I screamed like an eight-year-old Hogan fan in back in, like, eighty-seven when Cena beat Owens... that was how much I hated that asshole.

The Miz popped up to kill some time since the IC title match was cancelled. He talked shit about how he was the toughest guy in the building. Then he said that Big Show has been missing since the Attitude Era, which was more than epic because then Show came out and knocked Miz the hell out. Why, oh why couldn’t they have just made that a match and cut, like, ten minutes off Russev versus Wyatt? I’d have killed to watch The Big Show kick The Miz’s ass for a while. We got a break before the main event and that was needed. I had to pee so bad. Thankfully, even though I was a chick and clearly dressed like a chick, at five-eleven and, after the summer I’d had, pretty muscular, no one stopped me when I hit the men’s room with Finn. It wasn’t my fault the line was shorter. The night had been so interesting, I had never even noticed that Finn had kept his hoodie zipped up all night. When we got back into our seats, it was seconds before the show went back out live.

Just as the camera moved in front of us, Finn opened his jacket and pulled something out his pocket. I wasn’t really paying him attention…the show was back. But the cameraman pointed over at Finn and my jaw DROPPED. His shirt said ‘I Love You. Please Marry Me’. He had a gorgeous ring and everything. I screamed, grabbed it…I think I nodded like a bobble head on national television. I laid a kiss on my new Fiancé that made that cameraman very glad it was a pay-per-view. Then Brock Lesner’s music started, and our moment was over, as far as the cameraman was concerned. It took me a minute to be able to pay attention to the match. There were kisses to be had and some people around us congratulated us. When I focused back on match, I was able to watch Lesnar kick ass. He hit Rollins with thirteen or fourteen German suplexes. Seth Rollins managed to build an offense, sort of. But, in the end, Lesnar executed an F5. That should have been all she wrote, but before the ref could count the pinfall, the lights went out. When the lights came back up, the second-best moment of my night occurred. The Undertaker appeared. He hit Lesnar with a low blow, a chokeslam and two tombstone piledrivers. I lost my voice screaming in delight. It may have been already somewhat strained. Anyway, the end result was that Rollins was disqualified but he kept the World Heavyweight title. I didn’t care the wheres or whys… I got to see Undertaker live. I got engaged to the man I loved and who believed in me even more than I believed in myself. That was the single best night of my life.

When we got back to the hotel, the manager sent us up a complimentary bottle of non-alcoholic sweet sparkling pink champagne. We drank it off of each other and then we had all the sex. No, seriously. We made love all night. We had breakfast and then made serious love all day. We didn’t actually leave the room until we checked out the next morning. While we were waiting on our plane, I broached a subject that I wasn’t sure was going to go down smooth. “I want to tell our family and our friends, but I want to put our feet down and tell them that we’re not going to make any planning decisions for at least eighteen months.”

He tilted his head. “Why?”

“Because I want to be involved in the process…but I can’t be distracted with a million decisions.” I told him in all honesty.

I could never say enough how grateful I was when he said, “That’s a good point. We can tell everyone that we’ll start planning three or maybe six months after the Olympics.”

God, I loved that man.

The rest of the summer cemented our decision to tie ourselves together more permanently. We told our family immediately. I wasn’t surprised that Kurt had helped Finn find my ring. The way Vince told the story of all the different times Finn had dragged him around Lima to look at rings and how he’d tried to help Finnie go ring shopping outside our hometown just for the two of them to get busted by me had me laughing until my sides hurt. Of course, then Dad had to tell about when he joined Finn and I for lunch and how many times he had to cover for Finn to keep him from blurting out that he’d found a perfect ring and telling me all about it. Burt told me about how proud Finn and Kurt were when they came back from their shopping excursion. “You’ve gotta tell her how many actual stores you went to.” Carole laughed. So, Finn told us all about the ten or twelve stores he’d gone to with Kurt and the seven others he’d gone to with Vince. We had a great time and I loved my ring.

But we held off on sharing things with our friends. It wasn’t on purpose. But the rumors that James was planning a massive proposal for Fabray and she needed the drama so I told Finn we should let her have it. “That will keep people from trying to get us to start planning sooner than we want to anyway.”

I’d been surprised how easily our family had accepted me and Finn’s choice not to start planning immediately. Then again, I was pretty sure that Momma and Carole had started making dream boards and I just knew that if I checked Momma’s Pinterest page, it would already have wedding shit pinned. I knew that they were happy though, so I didn’t say anything. Besides, I was planning on letting them and Kurt and Cedes and Tana tell me what all I needed to pick out anyway. I would be the one making the decisions, but I had no clue what all the decisions I’d need to make were.

We spent time together as a family talking. I reached the decision that by Christmas, I was going to get myself a car. I was kind of hoping that by then Saul would have made me enough money that I didn’t have to touch the principle for me to get the tricked-out Ford Expedition EL of my dreams. It wasn’t all about the money side of things. I didn’t have time the rest of the summer. The day after we got back from St. Louis, Unique had orientation and since I had the most flexible schedule of all of her roommates, I went down with her. I said it was to make sure that things went smoothly with getting the keys for our rental and picking out me and Finn’s room…but the truth was that I wanted to be there just in case someone had to be put in their place for trying to come at her about her gender identity or what the fuck ever.

However, neither of us minded being the first ones to see the house. It was ridiculously cool. There were easily enough bedrooms for all of us. And they had been decorated for us. I had a dedicated place to work on my film class or my software design and development projects. But there was another study space on the second floor. I did tell Unique that she could hang out with me in my study if the guys got to be too much for her. She and I talked a lot those two days, when she wasn’t at one of the activities. She was good people…but Finn was right. Unique was definitely Mercedes and Kurt’s love child from the future. It was pretty hilarious, how much of those two were present in her personality, 

I was probably a pretty bad employee those last few weeks of the summer. After U and I got back from her orientation, I missed three days that next week. Then the week after that was my last week. Still, I had done a lot of good work. Over the course of the summer I designed two more websites, both of which included one time and recurring pay features. I fixed more than a few improperly set up networks in the office plaza, and defragged innumerable hard drives across the board. My last week was devoted to making sure that the Love, Learn & Play Child Care Center was all set up with two separate but tangentially linked network systems. In the office there was a two desktop and two portable point of service setup that would allow the adults to manage the daycare’s inventory, payroll, accounts payable and receivable, the employees’ timesheets, let parents pay in person if they wanted to and allowed Mrs. Richardson to track the kids progress as far as learning key skills. The second system was really unique. The daycare center itself was actually more of a school than a daycare center. It had a classroom that was dedicated just to teaching the kids all the building blocks, colors, numbers and counting, letters, phonics and reading that kind of thing. There were four computer stations, just the right height for three and four-year olds. Those desktops were work horses, user friendly and loaded with all the best learning software, Sesame Street, Jumpstart…they may not have been the newest, but all the reading software taught phonics and sounding words out. The math software would teach sorting, measuring and simple adding and subtraction.

The classroom also contained two book cases of easy reader books, a rack that held four V-Tech InnoTab Maxes, four iPad Minis, four LeapPad Ultra XDi Learning tablets, four Amazon Fire HD six kid’s edition tablets and four Samsung Galaxy Tab Three seven point oh tablets. I personally made sure that the internet access would not allow any of the computers or tablets in that room to access the adults network, had the absolute best firewalls I could design and would only be able to reach age appropriate sites. Those kids weren’t even able to access YouTube when I finished with that little gem.

The classroom also contained height appropriate, brightly colored work tables with five chairs at each. One corner was decorated as a reading area with a comfy chair for the adult reading the book and a plush kiddie looking rug for the kids to sit on. There were two light wood linen cabinet looking cabinets behind the reading ‘nook’, that held crayons, coloring books, those fat red pencils we all learned to right with, paper…kids’ handwriting paper, regular notebook paper and blank copy paper. The bottom ‘drawers’ were actually file cabinets that held picture sheets and toddler appropriate worksheets. The classroom was stocked, well organized and very clearly just waiting on the kids to come in and learn.

I was a little jealous. The daycare center I’d gone to when I was little was nowhere near as cool as that one. I was kind of nosy, so I took the tour Deacon Richardson offered me. His wife was at the Jones’ church where she was still minding the little ones until the new space was completely ready. He started with the room next to small two work station the office that contained the grown-up computers. It contained the ‘staff lounge’. The room wasn’t very large, just enough room for a table with a few chairs, and ‘lockers’ for the teachers to put their things away before their shift. There were two adult bathrooms off of the lounge. Each containing two stalls and two sinks. I’d needed her employee roster to set up the system for her, so I knew that she had two teachers and an assistant for each of the age ranges. Four stalls for ten to eleven employees seemed like a good ration to me. Beyond that there was a storage room/laundry room that had a good size, high efficiency washer and dryer and all of the necessary laundry and cleaning products. “Little Mercedes’ assistant has us all set up with subscriptions from Amazon Prime, so we can get all the detergents and fabric softeners and everything in the hypo-allergenic varieties. My ‘Nita loved the idea of not having to send the kids dirty clothes home in Ziplocs. She or one of the teachers can wash them and replace the accident clothes in their cubbies.” He said proudly.

Then he showed me the play rooms. There was one for each of the three age levels Mrs. Richardson dealt with, six weeks to nine months, ten months to two years, and three and four-year olds. There was a sign on the door leading into the first playroom that said “Remember, NO OUTSIDE SHOES Zone’. “The babies will be on the floor a lot as they get tummy time and learn to crawl.” Deacon Richardson explained when I expressed confusion. “Not only is it cleaner not to allow shoes that go outside into the room, the chances of hurting an unseen baby’s hand or foot are decreased too.” Even though he told me the room would be cleaned again before any kids were brought in, we both took off our shoes. The infant room held ten cribs and five partially stocked changing stations, but the center of the softly carpeted room was wide open. The only other furniture in that room were two small adult sitting areas that would give the ‘teachers’ for the infants’ clear views of the babies when they were asleep or whatever.

Accessible from the ‘infant’ room was a small kitchenette with a medium sized white refrigerator for bottles, three, shiny white base cabinets with drawers rather than doors and a stainless-steel countertop. The last cabinet had been replaced with a trash compactor and recycling bins. There was a small sink, perfect for rinsing out bottles or washing those soft baby spoons and a two-eye range top, perfect for reheating bottles. The upper cabinets were the same shiny white of the lower ones. The one that I peeped into was stocked with a rainbow of glass jars of Beechnut Organic Baby Food. Deacon Richardson said that Hudson had set them up with a way to get the baby food in bulk which really reduced the cost and Mrs. Richardson felt better about having to increase her rates if she included at least one meal per day for her kids.

The ten months to two-year-old room looked like a soft Gymboree playland but with cubby stations around the walls. The ones nearest the door were empty, waiting on the kids’ backpacks or whatever. The rest contained age appropriate imagination toys. Colorful, soft, building blocks, the big toy cars that even little kids could manage, play phones and play doctor sets there were two tiny kitchenettes between three sets of cubbies…they even had a couple of those weird tables where you could move the colored balls along the colorful metal, twisty, twirly track thingies. My mom didn’t transition me to a non-pediatrician until I graduated high school. But even when I was driving myself to my yearly checkup, I would still spend my entire wait playing at those kinds of tables. Those things were wicked cool. There was a story corner in that room that had a pretty, plush carpet, a comfy seat for the teacher and a bookcase full of kids’ books behind it. The walls had shapes, the alphabet and numbers all over the place and so did the rugs and playmats all over the room.

We walked through an interesting bathroom. Everything in the room was miniature. The counters held two sinks each and they were the wheelchair height ones so they were less than three feet high. There was a stable, built into the floor step stool in front of each one. The soap, hand dryers and everything were mounted a lot lower. The kids would be able to do things with a lot less help than in a more traditional bathroom. The toilets weren’t as tall as I was used to either. I think they were the compact kind designed for tiny bathrooms. They, too, had built in step stools in front of them and they had kid sized seats too. The cutest part was the half wall between the two toilets. It would give the kids a measure of privacy, but let the teachers be able to keep watch over the munchkins. there was a locked door that Mr. Richardson opened to show me a fun little supply closet.

While the bathroom wasn’t a Jack-in-Jill deal, the supply closet was. the other door led us into an identical, but bigger, bathroom. The three and four-year-old bathroom was able to take four children at one time. Their playroom was somewhat larger as well. They had zones more so than the younger kids. They had a ‘theater’ section with little kid sized chairs on small risers facing a forty-inch, wall mounted flat screen with a built in DVD player. That new area, and slightly more mature toys and books were really the only difference. I did notice that the wood in the rooms where there would be more sleeping, was darker than

There was a large nap room that the kids would only enter to go to sleep. It didn’t have those crappy cots I remembered from nap time either. No, there were twenty-six dark wood, daybed looking toddler beds arranged around three of the four walls of the room. The wall that housed the door of the room had twice as many cubby shelves as beds set up, so they were the right height for the kids to be able to get or put away their own things. Each cubby had a little nameplate awaiting a sticker assigning it to a particular child. There was also a nice plush armchair and an end table that would hold the Nap Supervisor. Against the wall on the other side of the end table was a dark wood linen cabinet. The linen cabinet held clean sheets and mattress pads for the toddler beds. Parents would be responsible for providing a blanket and small pillow for their children. I noticed that on top of the well anchored and lockable cabinet, was a white noise machine. I checked the make and model and it was all self-contained, not one of the ones that were Wi-Fi enabled.

There was a second, larger, kitchen where the older kids and staff food would be prepared. “We’ll get daily fresh fruits and vegetables delivered from that pretty little grocery store Anita fell in love with the minute it opened last March. Anita said that she would shop for the meats every Saturday when she does our shopping and we’ll cook them and bring them in done so they just need to be reheated. Less chance of one of the little crumb-crushers to get a hold of anything under cooked if we handle that part ourselves.” The kitchen was separated by a half wall from the dining area. The dining area contained two regular tables with six seats each and nine toddler height tables with six little chairs at each. “The kids will nap in shifts, but all have their lunches and snacks together. Well, not the infants, that’s why they have their own kitchenette. There’s a supply closet off that little kitchen that holds six stackable high chairs and four of those little bouncer seats for the bottle babies.”

“Won’t it be crazy with all those kids in here at one time.”

He shook his head. “No, you’ve gotta teach them how to behave when they are little. Like the Good Book says, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.’ that’s Proverbs twenty-two and six…true in first century BC…true in twenty-first century AD.”

I smiled. “Okay, I’m gonna need you and your wife to live another twelve…maybe fifteen years. Because when I have kids’ I’m going to bring them here.” I laughed.

“Life last and nothing happen.” He joked. “But you know, the kids aren’t the only ones Anita Bell is training. She’s hopeful that one of her new teachers will be the right person to take over when she is finally ready to actually retire.”

We talked a little longer and he showed me the reception area and the security and surveillance system that Rangeman was providing them at a reduced cost. I wondered for a minute, but then I realized, this daycare would be the only one that Emma Pillsbury-Gruber would be able to handle. It was so clean it was pristine…and since I was pretty sure that Mercedes had absorbed her need for clean from Mrs. Richardson as a child, it would probably always be that way. Yeah, Mr. Pillsbury-Gruber was a smart man. Even if he did look like he should be a beefcake magazine model. I shook off that thought as I did one final double check on the charging station for the PoS that be available at the intake desk before heading out. I’d handled the Richardsons’ and their new staffs’ in-person training on the system the night before and I was only there that day for the final system check and walk through. I was available via phone and I had created myself a remote passthrough into their system in case I had to trouble shoot anything long distance. Even though IT, software, network design…none of that was my dream career…it was still really nice to know I was that damn good at it in case I ever needed a backup plan.

That weekend Finn, Vince, Karofsky, LaKeith and I all moved into our duplex. But we barely had time to unpack. Wrestling, football and Swimming camps all started that Monday. The following Saturday was technically our day of rest, but it was also Unique’s move in day. At least she brought some help in the form of Ryder and Jake, fresh off his time on the road following Commune, along with her mom, aunt and uncle. Helping her with her stuff wasn’t the exhausting part…I was tired from all the times her family thanked us for being so good to her and looking out for her. Their gratitude became exhausting. Besides, she was one of us, of course we were going to look out for her.

We had another full week of our sports camps while Unique experienced ‘Welcome Week’…aka…real freshman orientation. My parents came down the last Saturday before classes to take Vince, Finn, Netta and I out for dinner. They were even cool with Vince bringing his girl Therese. Turned out. they had a massive surprise for us. that whole evening was the perfect end to the perfect summer. Then it was back to the educational grind. That summer was interesting. I started it with determination, stubbornness and tenacity and I ended it mostly ready for the Olympic trials, engaged and with a legally official brother. Interesting was one hell of a word for it. I was so excited for the future and so secure in the knowledge that I was loved in every single way humanly possible that I felt ready for whatever may come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost forgot to post this...Sorry, I'm seriously mentally visiting Wakanda until I can go see Black Panther one mo' gain. (How many times have you seen it?)  
> Leave me a Comment to get me through until next weekend.   
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	22. Older (George Michaels) & It’s My Life (Bon Jovi)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer 2015 from Haja & Gabby's points of view

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guest Staring:  
> Mitchell Rock as Calvin ‘Cal’ Kowalsky  
> Bill Hader as Stefon Meyers  
> Apollo Crews as Pierre ‘Tank’ Sherman  
> Emmy Rossum as Stephanie Plum  
> Tim Meadows as Dr. Tim Duvall

Chapter 21  
Older (George Michaels)  
Haja PoV 

The only consistent thing in life was change. Yet, amazingly, the more things changed the more they stayed the same. The first idiom was true in a way that leaned towards the frightening. The latter cliché was, in fact, actually just bullshit. Change was a constant part of life…but the only reason things stayed the same in the face of change was because of human stubbornness and resistance to change. I, personally, loved change. I was pretty sure that was why I loved working with KAMA as much as I did. I got to handle such a wide variety of activities that no two days were ever the same. There were those who might point out that I was spending a second summer in a row doing commercial office interior design, which would be an apt point. However, then I would point to the human resistance to change and point out that other than using Darcy’s intelligent design framework for the tech wiring, server farm and overall network for the Amor Verissima office and the rental property next door, things were being done from a whole different perspective. First and foremost, the AV offices were a corporate headquarters and an active, traditional business office. It would need functionality, efficient design, and security. That was entirely different to the needs of KAMA’s main office where, given the nature of the entertainment industry, we had to hold DESIGN at the forefront of our minds for every decision. In our offices, the first question was ‘did the piece’, whatever it was, ‘have the proper cachet’, was it hot. We knew that we’d be redesigning the office every three to five years no matter what. In the music industry, being at the height of style was a major part of having a successful brand. In the remodel of the floor above, FUNCTION was everything. There would be thirty-four or thirty-five people working there every day once fully staffed. It needed to be as efficient as two flamboyantly gay men could make it.

Perhaps it was unsurprising how difficult Kurt and I found it to keep that in mind. Oh, we didn’t have a problem with the flooring or wall colors or anything like that. No, the problem came when deciding upon furnishings and décor. We weren’t decorating to suit known persons. We weren’t decorating to suit any person, at all. We were really only able to add any decorative pieces to the COO’s office, because he or she would be the only person alone in their space. Blaine happened to be the greatest help we could ever have had for the rest of the offices. He understood how to look at durability and function better than Kurt or I ever would when it came to office furniture. And he helped to remind us that there would be multiple people in each of the remaining offices, so we needed to keep décor very simple. Yes, Blaine was a lot more help than my own boyfriend. Cal saw nothing wrong with having four corner offices ‘for the big wigs’ and then just a cubicle farm for everyone else. Of course, once he realized that there would be six different regions being serviced, necessitating three different shifts and all the other requirements that would create, he smirked. “You’re right…having all of them in cubicles would drive everyone nuts.”

But he did redeem himself. We were having trouble finding somewhere for the COO’s secretary to sit. He looked over the blue prints and floor plans. “This office here, the accountants next to the Chief Operating Officer’s office… you could move that wall in eight feet and create an alcove for the secretary.” He showed me what he meant. “Even though the accountants are losing forty-eight square feet isn’t going to hurt them all that bad since it’s just a two-person office.”

The thank you kiss I laid on him most certainly conveyed the true breadth of my gratitude. After I called the contractor and made sure it could be done and wouldn’t cause either a delay or force a hit to our budget, I sucked his cock until he was completely boneless in my bed…just to make sure he knew how much I appreciated his assistance. I absolutely loved Calvin Kowalsky. He was just so perfectly and unapologetically himself. Who but a man who was so supremely comfortable in his own skin and ridiculously self confident, would walk around with a tattoo of a flaming skull in the middle of his forehead. He was intelligent, but didn’t care for intellectualism. He was athletic, and his body was honed and chiseled and molded into that of a Greek god…but it was in service to his country and his brothers. Though he took pride in himself, to him, those people who worked out for the sake of vanity and conceit were pretty pathetic. “I guess I’ll have to forgive you, because you’re just too fucking sexy to let yourself go.” He’d teased me when I pointed out that I worked out just to stay in shape because I was too vain not to. He was career military, yet he was brazenly homosexual. He was a caretaker…protective almost to a fault…but even more he took care of those he loved. And he loved so fiercely. The men at Rangeman weren’t just his co-workers or even his brothers at arms…they were, for all intents and purposes, his brothers. Stephanie Plum…his sister. Their Matron, Ella Guzman, a beloved aunt. He’d even adopted a couple of Stephanie’s nieces. I heard a lot of stories about Mary Alice and little Lisa. That Mary Alice reminded me far too much of my own younger sister, a true wild child. Then again, Kitty Cat had turned out alright.

By the time KAMA and their crew left on the tour, Cal and I had been dating for just a bit under nine months. It was funny to me that just ten years before in my life, I’d have said that nine months was far too soon to be throwing out words like monogamy or love. But I knew that I was there. I just didn’t, necessarily, want to be the first person who said it. I mean, Cal was certainly still ambiguously attached to the military, so I wasn’t even sure if he wanted the same kind of commitment that I did. I was rather pathetic in my dithering back and forth on the issue. Thankfully, I had some wonderful friends that I’d made in my years living in New York. One of my best friends was Stefon Meyers. A tall, lean ‘twink’, Stefon always knew the best places to go. Back when we were younger it was always clubs, oh the clubs he’d introduced me too and oh the trouble he’d gotten me into and, thankfully, out of. But since he’d found his soul mate in the biggest of all the Bears I’d ever met. Dan Williams was huge…he was even taller than Benton Jones. He had jet black hair and ice blue eyes that were just ridiculously, scarily blue. They had gotten married on a crazy trip to Amsterdam, and in his newly ‘conformist’ life Stefon had gotten clean. Then he and Dan had adopted four multiracial siblings who they had seen as Wednesday’s Kids on the local news who had been hoping for a family to take them all in. Settling down had changed the kinds of places Stefon knew about…but his keen eye for the best of the best had not diminished for the lack of crank, meth and cocaine in his system.

So, I met him for lunch at an amazing little bistro neat the Met. Over one of the most delicious ginger honey marinated chicken breast, spinach, and provolone paninis I’d ever tasted, I shared my problem with him. He held both hands over his mouth as was his wont when he was excited about something and trying to gather his thoughts. “Haja,” he finally began. “You remember how I was before I met Dan…I did far too much blow, too much X, too much chronic and way too may straight, though deliciously bi-curious, men.”

I laughed. “I remember. You were the one who introduced me to that club with the living piñatas…I didn’t sleep for three days after that night.” 

He smirked innocently. That was a smirk that totally lied. He wasn’t innocent and was trying to convince me he was. In that moment, I knew in my heart of hearts…Stefon must never, ever meet Kurt Hummel. “Was it worth it?”

“Shut up and make your point already.”

“My point was that I could have spent the rest of my life partying and telling people all the best places to get completely fucked up and enjoy themselves way too much. I could have kept convincing myself that Seth or whichever other straight man I managed to get to take a walk on the Stefon side was going to convert to homosexuality… I could have kept doing what I was sure made me happy. But I chose to reach for more. I chose to see if it was worth it to trust that Daniel would always make me feel as he makes me feel…and he has. I do know that it may not last forever. But I wake up every day in his arms and feel better than I ever did in all the clubs…even the one with the human fire extinguishers. You have to choose to find out if Cal makes you feel better than the false safety of your fear does.” He said wisely. Then he forced me to walk halfway back to Chelsea so he felt he’d worked off our lunch.

I did think about what he said. And I knew he was right. I would have come to that conclusion even if we hadn’t run into Karen and Jack…two of our old crew of friends to whom change only applied to their apparel. Somehow, the duo…crazy as they were…managed to get the whole story out of me. “Well, Hajey…I know how you feel about marrying for money…so I won’t ask about the size of his wallet. Instead, I’ll ask the second most important question one should consider when thinking of committing. How big is his dick?”

The smile on my face must have said it all. Because Jack started clapping. “Okay, so he’s certainly gained your stamp of approval on the size issue. And we all know that you, Haja Johnston, like a good-sized Johnson.” He tittered at this own joke. “So, what’s the sitch? Is he a but-his face? Is he still closeted? Is he married?”

I rolled my eyes. I knew it was just Jack being Jack, but sometimes I just couldn’t with him. “He’s not married…unless you count the military. He is definitely not a but-his-face…though I couldn’t cast stones on that one. I know that my own face is one that not everyone finds aesthetically pleasing. Everyone who knows him well knows he’s gay…he isn’t closeted, just not you.” I said cattily.

“So, what’s the problem, then?” Karen shot back. “If you love him, the sex is great and he’s into you…hell, Honey, I had two ex-husbands and had been married to Stan for four years before all those stars aligned.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Karen…you knew Stan for a decade before you married him. Which one…you know what? I do not want to know the answer to that. Instead, I’ll just say thank you for putting my issues into your rather gin-soaked perspective. It actually helped this time.”

Of course, what helped the most was Jack swiping my phone and upon seeing Cal’s picture stating, ‘Oh, he is cute…and so buff. If you don’t want him, send him my way. I just love a man in uniform.”

I snatched my phone back, growled threateningly and had an epiphany. It had never before bothered me when he said something like that. I knew we shared the same ‘type’ and usually the fact that he found Cal attractive would have just been a co-sign to my good taste. In fact, I’d had other relationships that, when I was ready for them to end, I’d purposely introduced them to Jack and-slash-or his best friend Will. Jack had no compunction about fucking someone I was with if he knew I wanted an excuse to end things with…and poor Will was pretty easily tricked into doing the same. Jack really was a horrible influence. But that day…that moment…I was livid and perfectly willing to claw Jack’s eyes out.

Stefon, Karen and Jack all gave me a laughing look, but it was Stefon who put what he was thinking into words. “I believe you know what you need to do Haja. Like Queen Bey says…if you like it…you need to put a ring on it.”

Karen laughed. “You don’t have to jump straight to marriage, like Queen Stefon over there. Just tell Captain HotPants that you love him like I love my shoes. And hold on to him as tightly as I do Stan’s hand when we’re in Vegas walking past an all-you-can-eat-buffet.”

There was no way that any of us were touching that. We were silent as the grave because we knew that Karen could make Fat Stan and Bald Stan jokes…but, depending on her mood, she’d cut a fool if anyone even co-signed. None of us, not even Jack, was stupid enough to say anything that early in the day. Stefon smiled at all of us. “Well, it’s my day to provide snacks for Leilani’s soccer team and I have to get over to Hell’s Kitchen to the Westerly Market…I cannot have my little angel drinking anything that might possibly have GMOs.”

By the time I’d made it back to the office, I was quite late…but I was in a much better place mentally and emotionally than I was before I left. With my emotions better understood, I made the decision that the very next time Cal came to New York, I would share my feelings with him. Despite knowing how dangerous Cal’s job was, it never entered my mind that the next time I saw him it would be for any other reason than one of our twice monthly, planned and scheduled visits. I certainly never thought that I’d get a call from Tank Sherman at two forty-three in the morning that very next Wednesday.

“Hello?” I asked blurrily as I touched the green symbol and immediately put it on speaker phone.

“Johnston, this is Tank at Rangeman Trenton. We had a takedown tonight and Cal was shot. At least one of the bullets was an armor piercing round. Can you get here our do we need to get one of the guys from Rangeman’s New York satellite office to drive you?” I tried to stand and sit up and talk and who knew what else, all at the same time. None of them did I successfully complete. Tank heard the thud of my body hitting the floor and the unintelligible sound that left my throat and continued, “I’ll have Hitta pick you up and complete the transport. He’ll be there in twenty. Pack for a few days…Hector will make sure that you have whatever you need to do your work from here.”

“Tank,” Fuck my voice was as shaky as my hands. “Is he?”

“Johnston-Haja-he was alive when we got here. But, we don’t know much of anything else yet. Little Girl is working her connections on the nursing staff…to get us more info…but nothing yet.”

“What about Ranger?” I asked as I muscled my favorite suitcase down from my closet shelf. I knew that due to the paperwork all the Rangemen signed, the hospital would have no choice but to give him answers.

“He’s ‘in the wind’. Won’t be back until the end of the month at he earliest. I hold the medical power of attorneys until his return. But trust me, The Grapevine is faster.”

I should not have been able to hear those capitalizations…but they were definitely there. “Have they called his mother?” Sarah Kowalsky was a force to be reckoned with. I’d never want to be the person who had to make that call.

“Cal’s rules are the same as Ranger’s…same as mine…parents are notified only if no other recourse is available.” Which I understood to mean, only if the Last Rites were believed to be needed. “As soon as you became eligible, he changed his standing injury orders to state that you should be notified and, if possible, brought to visit him.” He said calmly. I later found out that my eligibility was wrapped up in Cal’s feelings for me. Only those who the individual Rangeman considered to be their significant other could be added to their injury orders notifications and visitors list.

“Okay, I’ll be ready when Hitta gets here. Oh, and Tank, Thank you.”

The next few hours flew by in a blur. I couldn’t say exactly how long it had taken Hitta to get cross town, but my almost anal-retentive home organizational systems allowed me to get myself dressed, my clothes, iPad, tablet, laptop and all needed peripherals packed and down to the lobby of my Midtown co-op before he arrived. Hitta was not a talkative fellow. I would usually have felt a need to at least try to engage him in conversation, but not that night. That night silence truly was golden. At some point I managed to gather the wherewithal to shoot Yasmine an email to let her know that I’d been called away under the most urgent of circumstances and would be handling everything via Facetime, Skype or email. She was such an amazingly efficient woman, by the time my head was clear enough to check back in with her a few hours later, she had managed to get my Wednesday schedule cleared and pushed Thursday’s and Friday’s meeting to Monday and Tuesday of the following week. She’d even rescheduled them as video conference calls rather than in person sit downs.

Hitta must have flown because what felt like the longest hour long drive of my life had, according to the clock in the dashboard, been cut down by at least a third. I flew out that shiny black car despite the extra weight of my rolling suitcase, briefcase, and messenger bags. Hector Gutiérrez met me at the emergency entrance. I was so completely out of it, that I wondered for a moment when the wiry computer overlord of Rangeman had learned English before I realized that we were both speaking Spanish. “Cal’s still in surgery. Angelita’s contacts came through and we do know that only one of the bullets made it through his vest. It did some damage, pierced a lung…went out his back and was lodged in the other side of his vest. But believe it or not…that wasn’t the worse one. The biggest problem was created by the other bullet. It cut through his neck, missed one carotid…but nicked the other. If Brown hadn’t been on scene and wasn’t as good as he is…Cal would have bled out before the EMTs could get there. As it is, things are still up in the air.”

“Who did this to him?” I growled. I was not a man who looked to violence to solve my problems or to deal with my emotions. But I’d never before wanted to beat another human being to death with my own bare hands as much as I did in that moment.

Hector’s smile was vicious. “The team was after a FTA who thinks he’s some kind of drug kingpin. He makes okay bank, surrounds himself with stupid but big muthas. One of the stupid big pendejos was the shooter. Mr. Kingpin is back in the system…the shooter, he’s in one of the cages at Rangeman. Cal makes it, we’ll give him over to Angelita’s cousin Eddie at Trenton PD. If not…no one will ever find the body.”

He showed me up to the waiting room where several, big broad men in black of a rainbow races and one little White girl with far too many nicknames and some ridiculously colorful pajamas were all congregated awaiting word. She came over and dragged me to a seat next to her. Stephanie Plum was no more of a hugger than the men she worked with, so I wasn’t surprised that she simply squeezed my hands. “Cal’s going to be okay. I just know it.” she said quietly. “Let me get one of the guys to take your things back to Cal’s apartment at Rangeman. Your suitcase is pretty, fully functional and looks like it cost more than most of these people make in a month. Trust me, I went to school with a lot of the nurses and orderlies here…they’ll steal. Not usually from anyone in Rangeman or associated with Rangeman, but that is a really tempting bag.” She whispered as if sharing a secret. Then again, maybe she was. Maybe the tendency of her former classmates towards thievery was one of those unspoken, but well known, secrets that most communities had. In any case, it made me smile, or as close as I’d come to doing so all morning, so I squeezed her hand in thanks.

I didn’t even see or hear her say anything but Gunney came by and took everything but my messenger bag off to Rangeman’s building. After that, the waiting became interminable. It felt like time was crawling backwards by the time another update about two hours after I’d arrived. “Stephanie, they are suturing your friend now.” Okay, why did she say ‘friend’ that way? “The surgeons are very optimistic about his outcome. He didn’t code at all on the table. And the bullet missed his trachea and his larynx. He did have a collapsed lung, but it wasn’t as bad as they thought it was going to be. The bullet passing all the way through the chest cavity alleviated the usual pressure that would have been in play. Your ‘friend’,” there it was again. “does have a chest tube, but, he shouldn’t need it for long. The doctors will be in when they finish up.”

Stephanie looked over at me and made sure that I was feeling the relief her friend’s message had created in the entire room. Then she thanked the woman and sent her on her way. “Stephanie, thank you for working your connections to get us news faster. But I have to ask, why was she saying ‘friend’ like that?”

The feisty brunette sighed. “My ex has most of The Burg, that’s the Trenton neighborhood where we all grew up, Chambersburg. Anyway, he’s a cop and he doesn’t like the fact that I’m not his stay at home wife and mother. He absolutely hates that I do what he considers to be a ‘man’s job’. And let’s not forget how much he loathes the fact that I’m with Ranger and not him. Basically, Morelli’s not happy that he didn’t get what he claims he’s wanted since he was seven or eight. So, long story short, he’s convinced a lot of the people that know me and know my parents, that I’m not really with Ranger…that I’m basically whoring myself out to every single Rangeman and that’s why I work there and live there and that the guys are all thugs and criminals themselves. Its all bullshit, but I’ve never said that The Burg’s residents were smart.”

“Wow.” I breathed softly. “How do you not cuss each and everyone of them out on the daily?”

She shrugged. “I hit Morelli with a car when I was eighteen. Remembering him flying backwards into the laundromat wall does help, a lot. As for the rest of them, it took me a very long time to realize that those who know me and love me know the truth and don’t believe the garbage, and those who believe the rumors and bullshit aren’t important. I keep up the appearance of the same relationships we’ve always had, because they are good resources to have in our line of work, but I no longer give them the power to hurt me.”

She may not have been a hugger, but Lord knew I was. I could hear in her voice how much and how long she had been hurt. Even worse, something told me that she felt that someone she really loved had come down on the wrong side of that emotional battlefield. Stephanie might not be one to initiate hugs, but she actually gave good ones. There was another long wait before a tall, older man came in and over squat in front of Stephanie. “Hey, Pumpkin, how are you holding up?”

“Hey Daddy, I’m good, how did you even know? I told Tank not to call you until we knew how Cal was.” She asked quietly.

Her father smiled, crinkling eyes that mirrored those of his daughter. “That ditzy nurse friend of yours, Gina, she called to let me know that you’d been here since before two and might need some breakfast. Hector told me what had gone down. How are the boys?” Okay, maybe all the nurses weren’t gossipy bitches.

“Shadow just had a graze. Less than ten stitches and a band aid. He’s not hurt, just angry that the shot went right through the middle of his frat brand. Cal, he took two to the vest with one going through and through on his left side. The other went through his neck. The blood loss had Brown worried as hell. So much so that he scrubbed in. Jenni said the doctor should be out soon. Dad, this is Cal’s boyfriend Haja Johnston. Sorry, forgot to introduce you earlier.”

We both brushed off the apology. “Nice to met you Mr. Plum. I’ve heard a lot about your granddaughters from Cal.”

Frank Plum laughed quietly. “Your boyfriend would spoil those girls rotten if he could.” He agreed. “Nice to meet you too, Mr. Johnston. Cal’s gonna be just fine. I can feel it.”

“Do I look that bad?” I scoffed.

Both Plums simply nodded. “Not to be funny, Son, but you look like you’re living in fear that your soul’s about to be cut in half.”

“That’s exactly how I feel.” I whispered in shock that someone could put the rollercoaster of emotional turmoil I’d been experiencing all morning into words so easily. “How?”

Frank Plum just nodded. “I see that same look on my Pumpkin’s face whenever Manoso’s been injured bad enough to have to go under the knife.” He smirked at his daughter. “That’s why I never believed for a moment that you’d really marry that testa di cazzo, Morelli. He wasn’t the other half of you.”

Anything else that the father and daughter might have said was cut off by the arrival of a doctor. He didn’t ask who was there for Cal, he just came directly over to Steph, Tank joining him as he did so. “Sherman, Kowalsky is in recovery. He’s stable. I’m sending him to ICU overnight to forty-eight hours. He’s in good physical condition. Neither of the bullets fragmented, Brown did his job well and got Kowalsky here. He was really lucky, a millimeter further in any direction and he’d have bled out in the field. Hell, an inch further back and his spinal cord would have been severed. Thankfully, he’s a universal recipient blood type so we had plenty of blood available. Your boy arrived a few quarts low.”

“What kind of recovery are we looking at for Cal, Doc?” Stephanie asked him quickly.

The doctor acknowledged her with a small smile. “Plum, barring any unforeseen issues, he’s going to be here at least seven days. We’d usually keep a GSW like his for ten to twelve days, but Brown can handle him after a week. Before he starts pissing off the nurses. Last time one of you lot had to be here longer than a week, the nurses started plotting poisoning their jello.”

Tank snorted. “That was Santos, they were plotting because three of them found out he’d asked all of them out for the same weekend.” 

I chuckled. I could actually see Darcy pulling a similar move if the nurses were all cute men. “That was before he started dating Darcy, right?”

Steph nodded. “Lester hasn’t gotten hurt…wow…no Santos injuries since that first weekend he went to the city for the KAMA office opening.”

Mr. Plum smiled. “He has something better to do than risk his ass for shits and giggles. Some men need something to live for, or they start doing stupid shit just to make life interesting.”

The doctor shook his head in pure consternation. “Then we need to get all these Rangemen paired up. I’m tired of seeing them in my OR.”

Stephanie cut me a sharp glance. “Then this may well be the last time you’ll see Cal.” She giggled.

The doctor glanced at me and nodded. “Good, young man, I take it you’ll be helping Brown with Kowalsky’s recovery. He’s on limited movement for two weeks after he gets out of here. PT and desk duty for four weeks. Then, if and only if, he’s followed my instructions to the letter, I’ll release him for sex and exercise back up to Rangeman’s ridiculous standards. But I will not be releasing him to go back on the beat for three months.”

Tank nodded. “The SOP is being followed?”

The doctor rolled his eyes. “Round the clock guard outside Kowalsky’s room. Treatment orders will be emailed to Brown and Manoso, same for discharge orders. Gina Bianchi and Helen Ricci are the nurses that will have his care tonight. I’ll make sure that the shift charge nurses let the guards on the door know who will have the other shifts as we go.”

I couldn’t stay quiet any longer. I had something I needed to know and it spilled out. “Can I see him? I mean is it okay if I visit him?” I hated how pleading my voice sounded. “I don’t want to break any rules, but I?” I cut myself off before I shed all dignity and started to beg.

The doctor’s astute gaze took in my shaking hands, the ring that wasn’t present on them and the fear in my eyes. He wasn’t as gruff as he’d been just moments before. “Don’t worry. After that one,” he gestured at Stephanie, “pretended to be a polygamist for the seventh or eighth time, our Board of Directors was made to see reason. They tossed that dumb ass rule about visitors being only spouses and blood relatives almost a year ago. As long as you’re on Kowalsky’s most recent approved visitor’s list, you’re fine.”

“He is.” Both Tank and Steph assured him.

“Then as long as I have your word that you’re going to sit beside him and hope and pray that he doesn’t undo all my hard word in the next six months, then you don’t have to leave here until he does.”

I assured him that he had my promise. Mr. Plum, however, snickered. “Something tells me that Johnston’s constant presence was probable with or without your permission.”

“People recover better and faster when they are surrounded by loved ones. It’s not my job nor is it my place to decide who qualifies.” The doctor smirked before taking his leave.

Tank organized the guys for visiting when Cal was allowed visitors. There was another forever long wait while Bobby and the recovery room nurses monitored Cal to make sure that he transitioned properly from being under anesthesia to being in restive and restorative sleep. It was a little before ten in the morning when the first of Cal’s visitors were allowed into his ICU ‘room’. After all the guys who had been on the ‘take down’ with Cal had all seen him for a few minutes, Hector went in and set up a Wi-Fi booster that piggybacked on the Hospital’s network, but created a separate, encryption protected network. It allowed me to run my devices safely and at almost the same speed I had in the KAMA offices or at home. While Cal was in ICU, I was only able to be in his room every day from nine to six and then again from eight to ten. I worked in his room unless the nurses and doctors needed access. It was funny how quickly I developed a routine. When I got there in the morning, I pressed a kiss to Johnny Blaze, the flaming skull tattoo on Cal’s head, before I settled down to talk to him as I worked. He probably had dreams of hardwood types and the weird names they give paint colors. Whether I was stepping out to allow the nurses and doctors room to do their work or leaving for a couple of hours because visiting hours had reached their end, I never left or entered that room without pressing my lips to Johnny, just to assure myself that Cal was still there.

During the two hours in the early evening when I had to leave, I usually went and had dinner. Usually, one of his brothers from Rangeman would appear exactly at six and go with me to take me to some only the locals knew about the place restaurant with amazing food. I knew they were talking care of me because it was what Cal would have wanted or done for their loved one, but it gave me a chance to get to know them better and it made me feel as if I was a part of the family they had created among themselves. Only once did I make the mistake of accepting Stephanie’s invitation to join her family for dinner. That was an adventure that I would never have believed to be possible. We had to swing by her grandmother’s apartment in a seniors’ building and give her a ride to dinner, and afterwards, we took her to a ‘viewing’ at a local mortuary. My first impression of Edna Mazur was a horrifying blend of ‘why the hell is an octogenarian wearing a tube top and a mini skirt’ and ‘did this octogenarian really just grab my dick?’

Unfortunately, the answer to the second was a very real ‘yes’. Though she was complimentary about the size of my endowment, I could not stress intensely enough how much I wished that I’d never found out the answer to the first. But I did learn the answer to my first query over a delicious, if very traditional, dinner. Apparently, there would be no time for ‘Call me Edna, Big Boy…anybody with a package like that can sure as hell call me by my first name’ to change after dinner before the trip to the mortuary. I found out that the ‘viewing’ was for the late ‘Mrs. Mable Juniak, no relation to the city’s former chief of police and current mayor, but Mrs. Mable Juniak apparently died during rigorous coitus with her now bereaved widower Mr. Clark Juniak. “I want first dibs on a man our age still able to get it up and work it so well that she died with a smile on her face.”

“God, I wish that Sally had never gotten that job driving the hearse for Stiva’s” Stephanie muttered.

Her mother sighed. “It’s not Stiva’s anymore, Stephanie, remember. Now, Mr. Johnston…Stephanie said that you were in town visiting?”

I was so grateful for the subject change I stepped on a conversational land mine. “Yes, I’m here until Cal is back up and around.”

Grandma Edna cackled. “Yeah, Helen. Haja and Cal are two of those gays. I bet our sweet little Cal has a whole lot of fun with the package on that one.”

I was a little surprised at Helen’s reaction. From the stories I’d heard of her, I firmly expected her to freak all the way out. In my time in Trenton, I’d learned that Helen Plum was the very epitome of a conservative, traditional, old school housewife. According to the Rangemen that kept popping in to see Cal, she was constantly ‘bagging on’ Stephanie for not meeting the exacting standards of the ‘Burg, that Helen herself not only believed in, but actively lived by. But, to the visible shock of Stephanie, Edna and myself, Helen took a small sip of her wine and asked the expected questions like ‘where did Cal and I meet’ and ‘how long we’d been seeing each other’. When I answered them to her satisfaction, she nodded, folded her hands on the pristine white table cloth in front of her and looked at me with a steely gaze I didn’t expect to come from those placid blue eyes. “I like Calvin. He is a very considerate young man. He is very sensitive as well. Though he would hate to be thought of as such. If you continue to make him happy, I’ll be happy. If you don’t…well, I have the Desert Eagle my father left my mother and Frank has several guns that I’m sure he will let me borrow one.”

Stephanie looked proud, even more shocked and affronted all at the same time. “Wait a second…Cal’s boyfriend gets a shovel speech. You didn’t give Dickie a shovel speech. You didn’t do a damn thing to him when I caught him playing hide the Vienna Sausage with Joyce Barnhardt before Daddy had even finished paying for our wedding. You didn’t give Morelli a shovel speech…Ranger either…Hell, Saint Valerie is your favorite and there were no shovel speeches for either Steve nor Albert. I’m insulted.”

Helen took another sip of her wine. “It never entered my mind to threaten Dickie. As for Joseph Morelli…let’s be honest, after my part in your marriage, Stephanie, as long as I ‘liked’ the man, you were never going to marry him. But if I had to suffer through his running over here to tattle on you one more time…I may very well have shot him. As if he could ever beat the phone calls. Anyway, your father has explained to me that I need to demonstrate my love for you children in a way that is more in line with your generation’s understanding of maternal love. So that is what I’m trying to do. I do love you, you know. But I’ll admit, I cannot give Carlos a shovel speech. Primarily because he scares the hell out of me. But also, because I actually worry more about you breaking his heart than the other way around. The man suffered years of your back and forth with Joseph and still chose to trick you into moving in with him, Stephanie. As for Albert…come on. That man is so grateful for every moment Valerie spends allowing him to dote on her, there is no need for threats. Besides, I have no desire to clean up after he piddles on my floor like a scared puppy.”

I looked over at Stephanie and she looked as if her mother had a point. I carefully said nothing. Frank looked at me and smirked. “Don’t worry. It’s always like this. How are those nice kids, Tessa and Joe, doing with the crowd control at the concerts?” he asked. It was pretty much all he’d said all evening. He and I conversed for the rest of the meal while the ladies argued. As delicious as the meal was, it was so very much not worth the drama. I was ever so happy to go back to spend the rest of the evening with Cal, even if he was asleep.

And, gratefully, he was only asleep. Despite the initial positive prognosis, Cal did not wake up that first day. Nor did he awaken the next day. For three long days, I channeled my worry into my work. With so much nervous energy and little other distractions, I was able to get the final fixtures and furniture decisions made for the AV offices and connecting with several revenue streams that would greatly benefit KAMA. I didn’t leave the ICU during visiting hours except when the doctors, nurses or Stephanie made me do so. And even so, when Cal finally woke up, I was holding his hand but most of my attention was on my iPad. I was on the phone with one of the schedulers for the Knicks. We were in talks to secure Mercedes to sing the National Anthem at their season opener that coming November. The first fluttery movements of his fingers in mine went undetected as I worked the miserly asshole on the phone up to something at would make Mercedes Jones willing enter what amounted to a glorified gymnasium. But a moment later, Cal’s fingers tightened on mine.

“Email me with your best offer and a prospective contract. I’ll go over it with Ms. Jones’ team and let you know something within a business week.” I said dismissively. I didn’t even bother making sure that I disconnected the call. I turned to Cal and focused every ounce of my attention on him. His eyes were moving more than any other time in the previous eighty-four hours. His eyelids seemingly trying to pry themselves apart. His jaw moved as he tried to find the moisture to allow him to open his mouth. Not releasing his hand, I adjusted his bed so that he was sitting up a bit, rather than being completely supine. I picked up the covered cup of water and positioned the straw at his lips. They parted just enough to allow him to take a sip. “Cal, Cal Baby, you gonna wake up for me?” I whispered.

“Haj,” he slurred.

I nodded, though his eyes were still closed. “Yeah, Baby, I’m here.”

He sighed. “Good. Love you, Haj.”

“I love you too, Cal Baby.” I said sincerely. I was filled with more joy, love and relief than I knew how to hold. I pressed a gently kiss to his dry lips. The machines called the nurses, who in turn called that day’s attending physician. While they looked him over, I stepped into the hall and called Rangeman. Brown was there in what seemed like moments. He gave me a quick shoulder pat as he headed into Cal’s room.

He came out to explain to me the doctor’s determination. “Okay, Haja, you know the big things. Cal was shot in his neck and chest. That was bad. But he was only on the ventilator for thirty-six hours. That was great. He never met any of the hallmarks of a coma, he was always just asleep. That was great. He completed the course of prophylactic antibiotics in those first twenty-four hours. So far there are no signs of infection, though his temp is up so, that may not be as accurate as we’d like. But things are looking really good over all, so they are going to move him down to a regular room this afternoon. Hector is going to come and move your set up in a couple of hours, so you’ll technically be in his room before he is.”

“Thank you, Bobby.” I was profusely grateful. In times of strife, I had a hard time understanding the subtle differences between American and British English…no way would I have been able to translate medical terminology on top of everything that day.

“Hey, it’s a big part of my job.” He assured me. “I’ve gotta get back. I left Tank in charge of the evaluations while I came to check on Cal. He likes to drop everyone half a point on some warped principle for lack of style.”

I smirked. “I can understand wanting the guys to look good while representing Rangeman. Heaven knows, that’s why so many people come up to me at award shows wanting the company’s name and information.”

“Yeah, but they are already doing so. Tank’s completely arbitrary ‘style’ points are just his way of making sure that no one beats his score.” Bobby shared with a laugh.

The rest of the morning was spent at Cal’s side. Thankfully, I did have the forethought to get Yasmine to shift my other morning conference call to much later that afternoon. The move down to the private, general treatment room did go smoothly. I was there waiting on him when he arrived. I settled next to his bed and was there for the next ten days. I didn’t leave his side unless necessitated by work or the doctors, nurses or Stephanie and Bobby made me. The next ten days were interesting, to say the least. Cal was good for the first two or three days. Then he was ready to go home. By the morning of his discharge, he’d told off three different nurses. Though, in his defense, one of them really did deserve it. She’d been trying to pump Cal and I for gossip and dirt on Stephanie. The nurse was so annoying that by the time Cal lost it, I’d been subtly insulting her for the better part of the ten minute conversation. But apparently subtle wasn’t a concept that was understood by most of the residents of the Burg. Still, maybe threatening to physically throw her out of the room by way of the window was a bit more than was appropriate to the situation.

Over the course of those two weeks, I was proud of the way I’d handled balancing my job and being there with and for Cal as he recuperated. Once he was out of ICU, I made twice weekly drives into Manhattan to take any necessary meetings. There were several that I needed to take with Shelby Johnson, who was our go to NYC contractor and persons such as the scheduler for the Knicks who wanted one of my clients for a major event that fell into my purview rather than Bradley’s. Though usually he was present at those meetings as well. Stephanie and her sister, usually accompanied by her younger two daughters, spent that time with Cal while I was commuting. Valerie Kloughn was nothing at all like her sister or even those of her daughters that Cal had told me so much about. She was blonde, with stick straight hair that was as thick as Stephanie’s, but the layers were significantly shorter than Steph’s riot of curls. Val was taller, but she also carried about twenty-five to thirty pounds more than was healthy for her thin frame. It was also very quickly apparent that while Stephanie had dreamed of growing up to be Wonder Woman, Val’s biggest aspiration was to be June Cleaver. Yet even with all their differences, there was an unassailable bond between the sisters. They really shared nothing between them but blood and memories, but when that gossip mongering nurse came in, Val was so cold she was positively impolite. And when a woman made a comment about how Val ‘used to be so much prettier’ and how she needed to lose weight lest her husband leave her with all those daughters to raise, Stephanie verbally harangued the speaker until the other woman left the cafeteria in tears.

I felt quite gratified to have been witness to both events, but honestly, seeing the two sisters care for each other just made me miss my own siblings even more. It was as if thinking of Barn and Kitty Cat caused what happened just a few days later. Cal was finally allowed to return to Rangeman ten days after he was released from ICU. As we were getting him settled in his apartment at Rangeman, my phone rang. I may have just ignored it, but I was thrown by the fact that the call was coming from the rarely utilized landline in my apartment. “So, I decided to surprise you with a visit. I walk into your apartment and your cleaning lady said that you haven’t been here in weeks and you’d left your bedroom looking like a hurricane had hit it.” Barnaby’s voice was seriously displeased. Only me or Kitty Cat would have heard the worry behind the tone.

“I’ve been in Trenton. Cal was injured on, what they call, a take down.” I explained while mouthing to Cal that it was Barnaby on the phone. “I’ve not been able to email or call you from a secure line to tell you about it.” I hedged. Cal shook his finger at me. He and I both knew that Hector’s security was so very on point. I could have included the information in either of the weekly emails I’d sent the two Thursdays I’d been sitting with Cal at St. Francis.

I could tell that Barnaby knew it was an excuse too from the harrumph that met my protestation. “How is Kowalsky?” There was some real worry there. I suppose that once you’d had charge of a man’s life, you never really released that responsibility.

“He’s going to be okay. He came home today. He has seven days before he can begin light PT. A full two weeks of that then he has four weeks of what he and Brown are calling real PT.”

“So, you’re going to be going back and forth between Trenton and New York for the next six weeks then?” Barn said knowingly. He so loved to take the mickey out of me.

“Basically, that is my plan.”

“Well, I’ll be here for the next month. So, since you don’t need the place, I’m staying here.” Barnaby chuckled. I forced him to tell me why he was in town. “I’m working a ninety day contract as head of security for Miuccia Prada.”

I smiled. “We’re having dinner with her on Labor Day.”

He nodded. “She’s in Manhattan for quite a few other meetings as well. She’s staying at The Plaza, but you know how I feel about hotel rooms.” He thought that they were never clean enough or secured enough.

“Well, mi casa es su casa. We should make time to have lunch or something while you’re here.” I suggested.

He laughed at me. “Oh, we’ll be having lunch alright. And while I’m stateside…we’re gonna go see Mum. I know you hate going back to Crowder, but she said that you haven’t been home in two years. We can wait until your boyfriend is back up and around…you know, for emotional support.”

I was non-committal, but Barnaby was nothing if not persistent and resilient. It shouldn’t have surprised when I returned from one of my bi-weekly in office days to find him helping Cal with his physical therapy a couple of weeks later. From there it was completely out of my hands. Cal was positively excited that he was going to get to see our hometown and meet my mother face to face. They’d spoken on the phone more than a dozen times. I hadn’t talked to his mother anywhere near as much and most of the conversations I’d had with her were very much recent and only detailed Cal’s recovery. Cal knew my mother’s birthday and had sent her a special bouquet of her favorite flowers. Thankfully, any visit to Crowder wouldn’t be happening until September at the earliest. That gave me time to focus on the final dates of the tour.

I did feel much better knowing that while I was in LA, Cal was surrounded by his brothers-at-arms, but also that my own brother was close by as well. It allowed me to give the Staple Center concert and the VMA’s my full attention. The attention which allowed me to secure three very lucrative licensing offers for a few of KAMA’s B-sides, the tracks that will never be released as a single. I also managed to get us a meeting with Jay-Z to have KAMA’s tracks available on Tidal as well as all the other streaming services of which we were already reaping the benefits. All in all, my time in LA was quite satisfactory…even if I called Cal so many times to check on him he started having Lisa and Heather answer his phone. Val’s two youngest daughters were both under three and neither was a very engaging conversationalist. I learned my lesson and stuck to calling at our agreed upon times.

There was less than a week on the US leg of KAMA’s north American tour after the VMAs. The four remaining dates went by with such speed it was enough to make a grown man feel like Linda Blair. I was very grateful that they went off without a single hitch. It gave KAMA and their team time to plan for the Prada meeting which had been on the calendar for quite some time. But more importantly it gave us all time to plan for the unexpected meeting that was called jointly by Rangeman and a special team at the FBI. If not for the BAU, we’d have been able to handle that stalking prick ourselves. But once law enforcement had been brought in things had to be done in a more legal fashion. It was taking a very concerted effort to keep Puck and Sam’s eyes on the prize, as it were. To be honest, I could certainly see their point. I didn’t like the idea of letting such a dangerous snake remain lose for so long either. It seemed as if we were tempting fate. But legalities must be met; cases must be built. So, on Labor Day we’d meet with Rangeman and the BAU Alpha Team at Rangeman’s Manhattan offices in the morning then with Prada at Le Cirque in the evening.

My summer had been far more packed than I’d ever thought, planned or, honestly, wanted. It had almost been more than I could handle. I’d questioned my emotions for Cal only to find out that they were far, far, far deeper than I’d believed even when I thought that I knew how I felt. I had made friends with a bounty hunter and her housewife sister. I’d learned more about the American healthcare system than I’d ever wanted to know, and more about gunshot wounds and the repair thereof than I was actually comfortable knowing. Yes, summer had been quite the season. I was both anticipating and dreading finding out what autumn had in store.

 

It’s My Life (Bon Jovi)  
Gabby PoV

I was never one of those people who only called on God when they wanted to praise His name when their lives were going wonderfully or to curse His name when things were going poorly. I actually enjoyed going to His house to worship and praise his name and often found a sense of peace there that I couldn’t find anywhere else. But even so, there were some Sundays when I felt like I’d rather show Him my appreciation of the world He gave us rather than sitting in church for an entire gosh darned morning. I could never tell when those times of restlessness would hit. There was no real rhyme or reason to them. Sometimes they happened when I was feeling good, sometimes bad. The times of restlessness came when my emotional health was deep in the doldrums. But they also came when I was feeling on top of the world. That summer had been good, great really. I was more than a little bit jealous that I hadn’t gotten to go RVing with the kids as the family had originally planned. But it was for the very best of reasons. A few weeks into the summer, I’d gotten a rather surprising call from Dr. Tim Duvall, the principal at William Howard Taft Middle School.

“Good afternoon, Gabby, I hope this isn’t a bad time to call.” He begun affably.

I smirked looking over at the Jones’ pool where Triple S, the Murphy triplets, Ethan, Bellatrix, Mia, and Rigo were all playing with Beth, Maea, Mara and Sloane. “I’ve got a few minutes. How’s your summer going?”

“Well, honestly that depends on how this call goes.” He returned.

I laughed. “What’s wrong?”

“Anne-Helen has decided to take that job offer in Cuyahoga County.” I didn’t really blame her. They’d offered her almost eighty thousand to come and teach ninth grade American History.

“I hope that she will be very happy. I know that she’ll be happier in a more metropolitan area.”

“Yeah, well…Of course I wish her all the best. But now, I have to find someone else to head the Social Studies department.” He said leadingly.

I didn’t want to get happy until there was a reason to get happy. “Oh, well, Ms. Betty has a lot of seniority.”

“She does. She’s also only two years from retirement. She doesn’t have a master’s degree. And most importantly, she doesn’t want the drama or the headache.”

I laughed. “Um, Tim…if you’re hoping to get me to take the job, should you really be calling it drama and a headache?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t…but we both know that it is true. Gabby, I’m gonna be honest with you, I need you to take the job. You’re the only Social Science teacher I’ve got that who not only has a master’s degree, but who also has the right personality. If you don’t want it, I’ll have to look outside the district. I might not have a hard time with finding somebody. Our little school district is pretty popular thanks to your son and his lovers. But I’d prefer it be you.” His voice was earnest, and I knew why he wanted me to take the position. I got along well with the other teachers in the department. I was able to act as a bridge between Ms. Betty who was older and quite stuck in her ways and the two younger teachers who’d started the previous year and had even less classroom experience than I did. But a simple truth was that Taft had social studies teachers who had more experience than I did even if they didn’t have the advanced degree.

“Level with me Tim…give me a concrete, real reason to take the job that even you say is going to cause me a headache. Its not like you’re not going to have to find another teacher anyway.” No matter how he sliced it…Taft needed at least three teachers per subject at each grade level. Anne-Helen leaving would leave us down an eighth-grade social studies instructor.

He sighed. “If I’m going to have to pay someone half again what I have to pay one of my other teachers, I want to know in advance that they aren’t going to cause me any extra headaches. You know our teachers, you know our kids. You believe, as I do, that athletics and extracurriculars are all well and good, and have a certain level of importance. But ultimately, school has to be primarily about education. I can trust you to fight me if I try to do something that isn’t right for our kids, but to have my back when I make choices that are in their best interest. But even more, you aren’t a teacher because it was an easy major. You aren’t a teacher because you couldn’t do anything else. You could have left teaching once the job market started rebounding. You have the degrees…you could have gone to law school after your son started selling albums. You teach because you love it and you find it fulfilling. I can trust that you’ll be here for at least the next five to ten years.”

He raised some valid points. “Let me talk it over with Sander…I’ll give you an answer tomorrow. But just so I know what to tell him if he asks…”

“The salary for the position is fifty-six and some change a year.” He whispered. Probably he wasn’t supposed to tell me, but we’d become friends somewhere along the way. “You’ll have textbook approval for sixth through eighth grade…starting with next year’s. We’ve already gotten the digital text book for this year. You’d also have input in rearranging the teams and those meetings happen before preplanning…” he said alluringly. He knew that would be a big deal for me. We currently had several teams of teachers who pretty much hated each other and only communicated through email or students. For some reason Anne-Helen and another of the team builders had always believed that that animosity helped to keep them on their toes…despite a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Honestly, Tim and I both knew that he’d made me an offer that was just too good to resist. When Sander and I talked things through later that evening, he agreed with me. “I know that the money isn’t a deciding factor like it would have been when you first started subbing. You remember how much of a weight it took off us when your certification was finalized and Tim hired you as a full time teacher.”

We shared a rueful smile. If Taft wasn’t a Pedagogical Training School, I’d have had to take a year off of working to complete one of the specialized training programs to get my alternative teaching certification, which wasn’t as impossible a dream as it had seemed at the time. Thankfully, I was able to undertake the necessary training while I worked under the tutelage of Ms. Betty. No one could claim that a thirty-eight year, nationally certified, teacher who had won the National Teacher of the year award once and Ohio State Teacher of the Year award five times in her storied career wasn’t a great trainer of future educators. And she had been. It was one reason that Tim had her basically teaching master classes every teacher workday for all his teachers who had less than five years of experience. “Yeah, doubling my salary helped us so much with being able to chip in right when Sammy went to New York.”

Sander agreed with a wry grin. “We’re doing fine now.”

“Yeah, but as much as we love Dani, Hell Bent and the babies, with this kind of salary we can afford to get our own place for real, not just on paper.” I finished the thought we’d both had but neither really wanted to be to one to say aloud.

Sander nodded. “Not just a place…but a dream home. Think about it Gabs, we’ve always had to settle when it came to our houses. We always got the best home we could afford just starting out or with paying the tuition for Sam to go to that special school that had the great dyslexia program. Or that was available quickly in a good school district because we were in a serious to get at least a little unpacked before my first day at work.”

He was certainly telling the truth on that one. Our first house had been old when we were born, yet alone when we purchased it. Some renovations and updates had been made over the years to the two-bedroom money pit before we bought it, but not nearly enough. But we’d lived there and loved there, and we’d made it our home until the twins were on there way. By that time, Sam was in the boarding school that was a necessity for him to get him the tools he needed to succeed in the face of his dyslexia. Then we’d found a nice four-bedroom house that had been built in our lifetimes, but it too had taken work to make our home. Even once we’d done what we could, it still wasn’t anyone’s dream home. The house we’d lost to foreclosure had been less than a decade old, but it had only had three bedrooms. We knew that we could make it work since Stevie and Stacey were still young enough to share. Sam would have graduated before they would need to be separated, so it would have been okay. But it hadn’t been our dream home either.

But neither of us wanted my decision to be all about the money issue. “The money is good, but the chance to help and make a real difference will be even better. Just the chance to get better working teams is worth any possible headaches. Heck, reorganizing the teams will take half the drama off the table.” I told him with a grin. “I wouldn’t leave the school until around four most days if I take this job.” I reminded him. “Sloane, Mara and Maea will end up staying longer at daycare.”

“Mrs. Richardson’s new center is open from six am to seven pm. That isn’t a consideration. You’ll still be the first one out of work to pick them up. And Maea and Mara will be old enough for Pre-K before we know it.” Sander had a good point. Jake played both football and basketball and with his sports and the New Directions, he was always at school a lot later than four. “You know you want to take the job…so just let Tim know tomorrow that you’ll take it and we’ll figure everything else out.”

He was right and even though I’d had to miss out on traveling with the tour during early August I didn’t regret it. Still that Sunday before the first day of school, I just didn’t feel like going to church. So, instead, I helped Sander get the kids ready and sent them off without me. I got dressed and threw my hair up in a ponytail then my Asics and I went for a run. Running wasn’t something I did every day, but whenever I had those feelings of restlessness…it tended to be the thing that worked best. My run took me past the high school, past the kids’ middle school…it took me all the way to the doors of the school where I taught. I knew that I wouldn’t make it home if I kept going forward, but I didn’t just want to go back exactly the same way that I’d originally come. So, I ran a block back and ran back towards home on the reverse side of the neighborhood…grateful for the simple grid pattern that had been used to plan that part of Lima. I did have to go further out around the schools, neither was only a block in size, but by the time I got to the back of the block the Jones’, and our, house I was feeling pleasantly fatigued. I continued to the end of the block and came up from the other side. It was funny, I very rarely saw the house on that side of the houme we’d been sharing at forty-eight, sixty-seven Brookgrove Court for the past couple of years. It just wasn’t the way we usually drove when we left the driveway. I was surprised to see a ‘For Sale’ sign in the yard. I made note of the realtor and raced on into the house where I lived.

I didn’t even shower before I grabbed my laptop and went into research mode. I looked the house up and found that while the lot was almost the same size as the Jones’ land, the house itself was about a thousand square feet smaller. I looked further and realized that it didn’t have a fully finished basement. According to the posting it could be completely finished if the buyer so desired. The house next door was five bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms, just like the house that held two thirds of our crazy, huge family. It was about the same age as the Jones’ home…but the exterior was of tan bricks rather than the traditional red ones of the house in which I sat. It had a three-car garage on the opposite side. I wasn’t happy with the on-main master, but it had only had one owner…and the asking price was under four hundred thousand. I printed the listing to a PDF and sent it to Saul and Mills. I wanted his input on whether we could afford it, and Mills input on whether the listing read as a good buy. She would find any buzz words that realtors used to hide problems in such a way that would let them say they’d told the buyers.

The site had a ton of pictures of the interior and I could see that the house needed some changes quite a few, in fact, but nothing that changed my desire for the place. I didn’t like any of the flooring, but I loved the size of the rooms. The kitchen was begging for a major overhaul. I liked my cabinets lighter than Dani and Cedes liked theirs, but white was a no go for me. I loved the countertops and the over the island five-light pendant though. It would be very easy for Sander and I to make this house our dream home. Mills had taken the email and gone straight to the site. In her reply, she went through several of the points that I’d noticed and felt that given how dated all the bathrooms were, we should take twenty grand off any offer we made. In his reply, Saul pointed out that Sam had pumped our ‘dream home fund’ up to half a million dollars over the course of the past six months. I shot him back an email calling him crazy.

He called me. “I’m guessing that Sam didn’t tell you or Sand-Man about the extra money he put in after Christmas…”

“No, no he most certainly did not.”

I swear I could literally hear my late in life brother smirk. “Well, he did, and Noah divided that same amount between Becah’s tuition fund and Altman Home Services. I would tell you how MeDe paid her parents back…but she swore me to secrecy…and she seems sweet and pretty and kind…but I’ve heard Daniel’s stories…she scares me.”

“That just means you’re intelligent. Even Coach Sylvester ‘respects Aretha’s ruthlessness when it comes to vengeance’.” I quoted.

Saul laughed. “Anyway…between the principle and the interest, which just gets rolled back into account, you’ll be able to get the house and afford to renovate what Mills swears is one of the most boring kitchen ever and all the nineties bathrooms. You might have to save up or take out a loan if you want the basement finished, and you’ll be on your own for home owners’ insurance, maintenance costs and of course your utilities.”

“Yeah, but Saul, those costs combined wouldn’t take more than my monthly pay, let alone both of ours. Could we really?”

He got serious. “I know that given your history, you’re afraid that you’d never be able to get a home of your own again…but Gabby, you can. You don’t need to do traditional financing and that would have been your biggest hurdle. Well, that and telling Danica. Sam and I have handled the first obstacle. You and Sander are on your own for the second. She scares me too.”

“Name a woman in this family you aren’t afraid of?” I shot back.

“Oh, there are plenty of women in the family I’m not scared of. Becah, Amara, Amaea, Nikki, Beth, Stacey…probably Sarah.” He teased. “Oh, and you…wait…did you really used to hogtie and castrate bulls in junior rodeo?”

“Sure did.” I said smugly.

“Alright then…you can scratch yourself off the unafraid of list.”

“Bye boy.” I scoffed. He was right though…I didn’t really want to tell Danica either. 

Unfortunately, there was no way around it. I showed Sander the listing and told him all that Saul and Mills had said. “We don’t have time to dither. You know how fast listings around here are going now and days. If we want this house, and let’s be honest, it has the one thing we most need, location. We can work with George to make it our dream inside…but we wouldn’t be able to make that dream come true if we were half way across Lima.”

“I almost couldn’t believe it when I saw the sign.” I whispered. “So, you want to do this too, right?”

He nodded. “I definitely want this. We both wanted to find a home of our own, we were just dreading having to tell Dani and Hell Bent that we were looking or moving away. Now we don’t really have to because, if it all works out, we’ll be right next door.”

“Right, so we should go upstairs and talk to Hell Bent and Dani now…so we can call the realtor and put in an offer first thing in the morning.” I said quietly.

He looked at me and nodded. “Let’s go. But when we get up there, you pick up Sloane and I’ll get Maea and Mara on my lap before we tell them…that way Dani can’t yell.”

Yeah, nope. That plan died a quick death when we got to the kitchen and both of the adults were present without a toddler to be seen. Sand and I just exchanged a look and I decided to dive right in. “Bent, Dani…I don’t know if you saw, but your neighbors have put their house on the market.” I tried to say casually.

She cut her eyes at me. “You’re going to try for it?” she asked quietly.

Sander came up and took her hand. “Dani-gal, you know how much we love you and how grateful we are for everything y’all have done for us.”

She shook his hand off and scoffed. “I’m happy for you, dumbass. I knew it was coming to this point. What with Gabby’s new job and all the money we’re all making with the projects that you, Benton and George started us all on…I knew that it was time. I’m just glad that you’re going to be right next door.”

Benton started laughing. “You mean you knew it was time because Ruth called you after church and told you not to give them a hard time about it.”

He got a dish towel to the face for letting that little bit of truth out of the bottle. “Shut up. I don’t know why everybody thinks I’m gonna hold them hostage. I love y’all…but I get wanting to have a place of your own. I mean, Gabby deserves a bathroom with a bathtub, not just a shower. And Stacey will be able to have the room of her teenage girl dreams. Sander and Stevie will be able to create the ‘Captain Caveman and Son’ man cave of their dreams. Besides,” she smirked at me. “Sloane will still be here half the time anyway because he likes to snuggle against my boobs when he’s going to sleep.”

“You’ve got my baby spoiled rotten, Danica.” I pointed out. It was true. Sloane was every bit as much Dani’s baby as Mara and Maea were mine. “But that’s fine, because Mara likes me to comb her hair better.”

“She’s tender headed and you’re soft hearted. Of course, she likes you combing her hair more.” Dani returned. Before we knew it, we were laughing and hugging and crying. Change was never easy, but that change would be a good one. Ethan and Mills sent us a formal offer to submit the next morning that offered the seller ‘three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a cash on the barrel head sale’, pending only a positive building inspection.

Life was change…but I really felt that ours had been changing for the better every since Sam and Noah had decided to work together to make the girl they were both crushing on happy. Who knew that one selfish-selfless choice could make a world of difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, within view of the end of this portion.   
> Read, Comment & repeat. Let me know what you liked, what you hated, that you're still reading?   
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	23. Skyscraper (Demi Lovato), Down Bitch (YG) & I Just Can’t Stop Loving You (Michael Jackson)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Triple S tells us all about their summer vacation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her beta reading awesomeness.
> 
> Guest Staring:  
> Millie Davis as Hope Griggs  
> Kyla Drew Simmons as Narcissa Thompson  
> Caitlin Carmichael as Mia Hinkle  
> Marlowe Peyton as Lisa Westinghouse  
> Tenzing Norgay Trainor as Rickey 'Rigo' Gonzalez   
> Ryan Potter as Killian Carlos ‘KC’ Lopez
> 
>  
> 
> Bradley Steven Perry as Ethan Harding  
> Hope Olaide Wilson as Bellatrix Thompson  
> Sierra McCormick as Vivian Leigh Marshall
> 
>  
> 
> Francesca Capaldi as Tiffany Murphy  
> Ismael Peter Casillas Nelson as Theodore Murphy  
> Ismael Peter Casillas Nelson as Timothy Murphy  
> Rae’Ven Larrymore Kelly as Savia Okoro  
> Asa Butterfield as James ‘Jamie’ Thomas

Skyscraper (Demi Lovato)  
Sarah Puckerman PoV

The summer before I started high school was a freaking epic summer. It was a metric shit ton of hard work, but it was so very worth it. Coach Sue gave me a week off, but the Monday of our second week of freedom, I was summoned to appear before the Queen of all thing McKinley High. Then she put me in charge of two little girls from the two largest elementary school that fed into Harrison and Taft Middle Schools she had found to be her new junior Cheerios. She called me and had me report to the high school early in the afternoon the second Monday of our summer vacation. I recognized one of the girls she was there with. Narcissa Thompson was the younger sister of Stevie’s crush-slash-friend Bellatrix. When we were little there had been some debate on the subject but when Bella had introduced us to her little sister, we’d all agreed, their mother had to have done it on purpose. The other girl was new to me, though she looked to be about the same age. “Jail Bait, these are my junior Cheerios for this coming year. I want you to whip them into shape. I’ve made arrangements for you to meet at the high school with Becky for supervision every afternoon for two hours. She’ll be there Monday through Thursday from one to four. Teach them all the feats Pippy taught you and Kelly. In fact, you can bring her and that Red Headed Stepchild I saw with her at what that middle school cheer coach jokingly called practice. I know that Kelly’ll be taking over for you at Harrison next year.”

Then she left me alone with the girls and Becky. “Okay Ladies, we’ll meet Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from one-thirty to three-thirty, if that’s good with Becky.” She nodded. “I already know Narcissa, but I don’t know your name?” I asked the lighter skinned of the two little Black girls in front of me.

“I’m Hope, Hope Griggs. I’m in the fourth grade at North Lima Elementary…” I was a little surprised, that elementary school fed into Taft Middle. I wouldn’t have expected that. Like Taft her elementary school tended to be a lot more cerebral.

I tried to smile comfortingly since she seemed a little nervous. “Narcissa, I know that you’ve taken gymnastics, have you Hope?”

She nodded. “Until we moved here last year, I took gymnastics since I was really little.”

“Good, then we should be able to get you up to Coach Sue’s exacting standards in no time at all. Now, I’m going to go ahead and let you know that Cheerios, even junior ones, have to get good grades. Nothing below an eighty-five is allowed. If you get anything less on one report card, you’re benched until the next one. Two in a row and you’ll be replaced.” I said it speaking to both of them, but the warning was actually pretty Narcissa specific. She hated doing homework. Her mother had grounded her like five times the previous school year that I knew of, so there were probably more. “But the bonus is that the training you’ll get this year, and possibly next, will pretty much guarantee that you’ll get on your middle school squad and later the Cheerios. That’s a fast track to which ever college you decide that you want to go to. I know that might not seem all that important right now…but trust me, it will be stupidly important before you know it.”

Both girls and Becky agreed to the schedule. I made sure that it was cool with Stacey and Tiffany, our friend that Sand-Dad called the American Ginny Weasley, and our parents. I wasn’t really all that surprised that Mrs. Murphy volunteered to drive us. She was a stay at home mom despite the fact that her kids were in middle school. Her husband was really into her staying home…some weird status symbol or something. It always seemed like she was always trying to fill her day with meaningful activity. Still, Mom and George pulled me aside later that week. “Alright Sare-Bear…you’re taking on more responsibilities at school. You’ve proven yourself more than capable when watching Jeanie and the other babies, so your mom and I feel that you’re ready to handle the responsibility of a cell phone. We were going to wait on your birthday, but, given the practices and everything, we figured that you having it a little early wouldn’t be a bad thing.” George told me with a smile.

They gave me a gift bag, inside which I found a brand new Sony Xperia Z3. “Wow.” I breathed. Neither George nor Mom were all that excited about me getting a real cell phone. I’d had Mom’s old flip phone that could just make calls in case of emergencies for the longest time. “Cool.”

“It comes with rules.” Mom assured me. As if I didn’t think there would be. “You have your Gmail address, the one that is linked to mine. That is the ONLY email address you can have or use until you’re eighteen. It’s the one you use for all social media accounts. Any social media account you have will be monitored by either, George, me or Lauren Zizes.” I raised a questioning eyebrow. “She offered when I told her mom that we were thinking about having Noah be the one to check in on you.”

“Remind me to thank her.” I muttered. No way would Puck have been a good idea. He redefined over-protective when it came to me “He’ll still have Artie or Darcy hack in to keep check anyway.” I grumbled. I wasn’t actually worried. I knew better than to do anything stupid online. I was so serious about getting an internship at Vogue when I was older. In order to do that, I needed to keep my real and virtual noses clean. I’d keep clean, but I was also going to make damn sure that I kept my Instagram fashion game tight.

“Yeah he will, just like I’m sure that your mom is going to peep in from time to time herself. So don’t do anything stupid.” George teased…but we both knew that he was super serious.

The phone was all kinds of awesome. I immediately emailed Mia, Rigo and Lisa Westinghouse, who’d become a good friend after sharing lunch for the latter half of the previous school year, my new number. I quickly discovered that, much like most people my age…I really loved texting. I got ridiculously good at it. I was the last of our little quadrangle of friends to get a smart phone, but in no time at all we created our own special texting language and inner jokes. And I managed to gain extreme proficiency in texting, strengthen friendships, and build a social media presence all while training the Junior Cheerios, babysitting the kiddles when needed, working on my future car with Dad and sometimes Mr. Burt and doing my summer reading list. Coach Sue had had my parents get me tested for the advanced placement track she put in place for those students who would need to be challenged in order not to be bored. I had just lucked out that my mom had convinced Mia and Rigo’s moms to have them tested too. Lisa had been in gifted since she entered school, so she was automatically placed in the AP track whether she wanted to be or not. I wasn’t sure why mom hadn’t tried before. Maybe it cost money or was something she’d have had have to miss work to do. Life was way different from what it had been when I was younger.

My crew was ridiculously awesome. It was funny, we were all different religions. Of course, I was Jewish…with a Black Methodist chaser. No really, I loved going to the Jones’ church all the time and had even joined their praise dance team. Rigo was seriously Catholic. Mia went to the Latter-Day Saints church over on Brower road. Her parents were very, very active and she went to a prayer thing every morning before school. Lisa was beyond agnostic. She had a good reason. Her favorite uncle had been killed in a mass shooting when we were in sixth grade. She said that a few Sundays later when the preacher at the White Baptist church in Lima had given a sermon that could have been written by the NRA, she’d walked out and she nor her parents had done organized religion in the three years since. They still had faith, to varying degrees, but not in man’s interpretation of God or Her wants, works, or demands. Ashley Prime went to the same church and she’d spread a rumor that Lisa was an atheist or devil worshiper or something. Given the real reason for the walk-out it had been really easy to make that line of bullshit backfire on the annoying blonde.

People like Ashley-Prime did a real disservice to their fellow blonde. They were the root and source of all the dumb blonde stereotypes. It was a little bit funny to me how three girls and their guy friend could all be so similar in our appearances. The biggest part of that was that we all had brown hair…though in different shades. Mia’s hair was the lightest, a rich, pretty chestnut brown that would streak blonde if she got enough sun. She was thinner and taller than either me or Lisa…she so could be a model one day. Mia had very fair skin but tanned beautifully. I had nice olive undertones, but the best I managed was a nice healthy glow. Mia and I were really different looking even if our hair and eye color were both very similar. On the other hand, someone looking at Lisa and me, it would be very easy for someone to mistake us for sisters if not fraternal twins. She and I were both born in August, her on the second and me on the twenty-third. Our hair was almost the exact same shade of dark brown. Both of us had somewhat curly hair…but she was lucky. Her hair straightened way easier and stayed that way longer. She was thicker than me, but not outrageously so. We both knew that she was probably going to be taller than me since we were actually close to the same height and she was technically younger, having skipped pre-k and started school at four in Kindergarten. We had both been visited by the puberty fairy a lot harder than Mia, but Lisa had managed to avoid the braces fairy, but I had missed the glasses one.

Rigo, our only guy, was despite all the usual caveats, was the tallest of all of us. His hair was even darker, even thicker than mine or Lisa’s and stick straight. I mentally called him a hybrid of Kurt and Artie and he was definitely as thin as either or both of them. Rigo was superiorly creative and yet he was also ridiculously adept in calculating angles and lighting diffusions…all in his head. One of the things we all had in common were that we all were pretty damn gifted in different areas of math. Rigo’s area was mathematical physics. Mine was easily computation, probability, statistics and game theory. Lisa’s was pure math…algebra, geometry, calculus…logic. Mia loved number theory and playing with numbers and numerical combinations. But by the same turn, both Mia and Rigo were amazing at art and history…and their discussions on religion were extraordinary. I loved fashion, but I also love journalism on the whole. The four of us were the only kids our age we knew who read the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Guardian pretty much on the daily. We each had one subscription and we just shared usernames and passwords for them. Lisa’s love of politics, sociology and examining geo-political societies easily augmented Mia and Rigo’s discussions of world religions and my contributions on how free-markets, free press and other ‘American democratic’ ideals either influenced or negated those societies often had others around looking at us like we were both crazy and speaking a foreign language. Yeah, it didn’t matter how popular I got or how much of a cheer chick I had become, I was still a giant nerd. But so were my friends…so that wasn’t a bad thing. It was funny, though, how certain of our teachers would chime in with a point or a book we should read, while others basically patted us on the heads and told us to go and play.

We were all different religions, and technically different ethnicities, but we had a lot in common too. All four of us were smart. We were socially active in our own ways. Rigo, Mia and I all cared a lot about stopping bullying…mainly because we’d been bullied. Lisa’s own experiences had been pretty awful too. Like Quinn, when she was younger, Lisa was really different from most of the kids she’d grown up around. She was a size fourteen in a size two world. Brunette where people preferred blondes. Lisa was just lucky enough that she had very supportive family members. Her parents thought that she was amazing, and her little brothers looked up to her like she hung the moon. She was the oldest of four and the only girl. That gave her something in common with Rigo. He was the eldest of five, though his younger siblings were of both genders. That summer after we’d pulled Lisa into our social group, she started forcing him to bring his younger sibs to hang out with hers in their pool. They used that to fill their Tuesday afternoons. Sometimes Stacey, Tiffany and I would take Hope and Narcissa over there after we finished our practices. Other times, we’d scoop everyone up and talk Lisa’s little brothers’ nanny or Tiffany’s mom into driving all of us back over to the Jones’ house to play in their back yard, where there wasn’t just the pool, but a whole bunch of yard games like horseshoes and bean bag toss.

Over the summer we really did go from being three long term friends and one new one to being two sets of besties and then just a crew. I’d known Mia Hinkle the longest of all of my crew. There were pictures of the two of us wearing construction paper feather headbands in pre-k. When we were really little we were sometimes mistaken for each other in the halls. That hadn’t lasted beyond fourth or fifth grade though…she got taller and I got curvier. We knew all of each other’s secrets…every single one of them. She was my absolute best friend. The only thing surprising about our friendship was that we’d cultivated it so early and kept it so long. Though honestly that probably had more to do with our parents and Puck. Before Mom and I had moved to George’s house, our houses had been close enough that we could play together year-round. Her parents had never looked down on Puck…knowing that he held me as the most important and treasured thing in his world and that he was as over protective of their daughter as he was of me. Even after we moved, there was almost always somebody willing to take me to her house, or her parents would bring her to where I was.

The friendship that had been a total surprise from the very beginning was Rigo. He had taken a seat at my empty lunch table the first day of third grade. Mia and I didn’t have lunch together that semester. So, I’d assumed that I’d be sitting alone all year. Nobody wanted to sit with the girl whose older brother was dicking down their moms and-slash-or older sisters especially since she was on the better side of poor. Anyway, he’d sat down and introduced himself. “Hi, my name is Ricard Elon Gonzalez…Rickey to my friends. And we’re destined to be friends. Like those weird life long friends who are as close as family…our destinies are tied together.”

I gave him a long, hard, skeptical glare. “Is that some kind of pick up line? Because My Bubbie has already told me never to fall for a stupid pickup like…and we’re only like eight.”

He gave me a withering glance and shook his head. “No, like you said we’re eight. Besides, we’re never even going to see each other that way. But my Abuelita drew your picture. She told me that she saw us and another girl…she has dark hair too. Though not as dark as yours and definitely not as dark as mine. She said that we’d be friends for the rest of our life and in a few years, we’d add one more girl and the four of us would be friends forever.” He gave me a winning grin. “And trust me…no one doubts my Abuelita when she has a vision. She is never wrong.”

“How ‘never wrong’?” I hedged though somehow I could feel the weight of the truth of his words. The Jewish people had always acknowledged and respected zeyers.

His next grin was positively cocky. “She saved my uncle’s life. In two thousand and one, my Madre’s eldest brother worked at Cantor Fitzgerald in Manhattan…one Monday morning Abuelita had a vision…told him not to go to work the next day. Six-hundred and fifty-eight people at his company died…he didn’t because he trusted Abuelita.”

With a history of rightness like that…who was I to argue. I never did regret becoming his friend either. Even if he was a little troll at the best of times and a total asshole at the worse. Seriously…Stevie said that Rigo was the poor, Hispanic Tony Stark. That completely described his personality. He was wickedly smart, amazingly creative, wonderfully determined and just ambitious enough. He was almost brutally honest. Though when he tried, his honesty was broached in a diplomatic way that I never managed. At first, I’d assumed that he and I weren’t going to ever be into each other that way because he and Mia were going to be that for each other. But by the time we all hit middle school, we all knew that Rigo just didn’t like girls that way at all. Heck, that year he had a huge crush on Puck’s bestie. I couldn’t fault him, Finn was awesome. Just, so not my type. Besides he was as much a brother to me as Puck was. I did tend to blame Rigo for my fascination with guys of Latin heritage. We all knew it wasn’t his fault, but he never called me out on that fact in public.

It wasn’t until after my conversation with Ashley Prime about allowing Lisa to sit with me at lunch one day…we’d been talking about a physics related math quandary in the line and just kept talking about it as we sat and ate. She was scarily smart…like if she and Rigo ever banded together, they could totally take over the world. Mia and I were not dumb…but we weren’t at the damn near genius level intellect of those two. Though both Lisa and Rigo argued with us when we said it. they pointed out that we conversed with them at the same level they conversed with each other. But the truth was that we were super smart in our areas of interest…they were super smart in all areas of interest.

I was woman enough to admit that I wasn’t sure that I’d have been able to be friends with Lisa any sooner or even under different circumstances. She was cool people with a great sense of humor and some seriously strong snark and sarcasm. Her wit managed to be biting without being mean…unless provoked. But knowing who I was before everything changed…I’d have assumed that any friendly overtures were just her making fun of me. See Lisa may have been picked on by the AssHaTs because she was a thicker girl, but they could never fault her home, or clothing or shoes or anything like that. Her family had tons of money. She lived over near Beth and Shelby. There may have been other kids at our school with parents who were richer than Lisa’s but not many and not by much. Once I got to know Lisa Westinghouse as a true and good friend, I started to wonder if there had been other Richie-bitchs that could have been good friends with…but then I remembered Abuelita’s vision and knew that it was meant to be the four of us. Besides, I hadn’t yet had the inner strength and confidence to believe that they might have been able to see past my lack things beyond the bare necessities…to not look down on me and actually see the real me. I still didn’t trust a lot of people to see the real me…it was just for an entirely different reason by that point. I was the sibling of major recording artist. I already had a rack that Playmates paid good money to achieve. I was the captain of the cheerleading squad and the protégé of the winningest cheer coach in the country. I had reason not to trust the motivations of people who tried to befriend me. Besides, I was really too busy to be bothered.

Of course, I was so busy partially because Tessa was on the road with Puck, Cede and Sam. But it was also my own fault…I could have said no to some of the things I was asked to do. Stacey and Stevie were both old enough to watch the younglings. But I liked spending that time with them. When I was little, Puck was always there, usually with Finn…or we were both over at Finn and Mrs. Carole’s house. I knew that Amara and Amaea and Sloane…they deserved to feel just as loved as my big brother had always made me feel. I was pretty sure that Stacey and Stevie felt the same way. It didn’t hurt that the Jones and the Evans never minded having us and our friends over there to play with the kids in the afternoons…I was pretty sure that the Jones’ pool hadn’t seen so much use since Devon and Kevon were little. Over the last couple of summers, Stevie and I had had so much fun teaching Double A and S, Jeanie and Rigo to swim. We did have help from Lisa and her brothers. A good time was had by all.

I was just happy that my friends got along so well with Stacey and Stevie and their friends. It was nothing for Angel Mom to have the three of us, the Murphy triplets, my crew, the Harding brother we could still stand…even Ethan said that his brother was a weak, spineless jelly fish who deserved to lose Tessa to Joe…both of the Thompson sisters, and Ethan’s ‘friend who happened to be a girl’ Vivian-Leigh. Poor Vivian-Leigh…her mom was a huge Gone with the Wind fan…she was the only blonde there other than Stacey, because Stevie’s hair had darkened to the same shade as Sam’s natural color. Most of the time Hope would be there…she was my protégé and if Narcissa was invited, it only made sense to invite her. And three days of the week, Mara, Maea, Sloane, Jeanie and Robyn were all present and accounted for as well. The five toddlers liked to play together…so the parents made it happen. Oh and we’d usually end up with Beth at least once a week too. It was so loud and yet so awesome.

The summer seemed to shoot by. We had so much fun with pretty much every body home for Father’s day weekend. That was a great weekend. After everything that had happened that year, it wasn’t surprising that Noah, Cede and Sam came home to spend the holiday with the dads. They’d have come home for Mother’s Day too if they hadn’t been in the middle of their exams. As it was, Momma, Angel Mom and Moms D had had to settle for getting flowers delivered to their jobs the Friday before their special day, to their home that Saturday and getting some boss ass jewelry…seriously, the Moms’ Apple Smart Watches were jealousy inducing. The day before Father’s Day, we had a great lunch with Noah, Tessa, Bubbie and Nikki. After lunch we headed over to the Jones’ house and ended up collecting all the rest of the family members of my generation and we spent the weekend playing around at Commune’s house. Man, I loved arcade Mario Kart. I took a bubble bath in a bath tub big enough to swim in. And it wasn’t even Noah and his love’s. Sunday, we had a huge party for all the dads in our big ass crew. It was fun. We found out that Shelby was having a baby…which was really weird since she was kind of old.

I overheard Mr. Antwan telling Mr. Hiram that Shelby had told Rachel a few weeks earlier and it had lead to the breakdown Rachet had had at the beginning of the summer. No matter what Rabbi Schram or Pastor Biggs said, I was glad when I heard that Rachel Berry had been beaten up. Don’t get me wrong, I had never actively prayed that she’d just do us all a favor and kick the bucket…but I didn’t actively pray that she would get better either. She was scheduled to be released that week and the two of them were discussing sending her back to someplace called Twin Valley for a full year of intensive therapy. Mr. Antwan wanted to break some rule that they had to get the crazy bitch the help he thought she needed, while Mr. Hiram wanted to try and do so without breaking said rule. It was probably a good thing they decided to table the discussion then, because that was a subject I would have dearly loved to eavesdrop on for the rest of the day.

The rest of the week flew by and before I knew it, I was showcasing Hope and Narcissa’s training to Coach Sue, because over the Father’s day weekend, Noah, Sam and Cede had informed Jake, Tessa and I that we were going to be their plus ones on the Teen Choice red carpet. No way in hell was I missing that. Besides, I actually understood why Sue had given me the two girls to get into shape. Part of her plan was that she was hoping to strengthen the cheerleading program at Taft, which would give her more Cheerios in the future. The second half must have been to broaden the diversity of her squad. The Cheerios the year Mercedes had graduated were way less monochromatic than they would be that coming year. Sue Sylvester had her issues…anti-socialness chief among them, but she wasn’t a fan of a mono-chrome cheer squad. “They’re just plain lacking. They lack stability. They usually lack rhythm and the simple truth is that they lack creativity.” Stacey, Tiffany and I had taught Hope and Narcissa all the stunts, trick and moves in the Cheerio Handbook. We’d then crafted them into a regulation two and a half minute routine. When it was done, she looked at me with something that closely resembled pride. “Jail bait, you’ve earned the captaincy of the JV squad next year.” That was the biggest compliment that she could-slash-would give me. I took pride in it. I was kind of excited to be going to the high school that coming fall.

But by the same turn, I had some trepidation about leaving Stacey and Stevie behind at Harrison. I knew that they would be fine academically. Stacey was much smarter than people ever assumed upon meeting her and Stevie…His dyslexia had never been as bad as Sam’s and it was caught a whole hell of a lot earlier. The worry came from the fact that Anastasia Marie Evans was nice. She was nice and sweet and kind. She thought that everyone was inherently good and she saw the good in everybody. Mercedes had long ago helped me to realize that that wonderful innocence was a great thing and should be nurtured. But it wouldn’t help to keep bullying from making a comeback at William H. Harrison Middle School. Stevie would handle the guys and that was fine, but contrary to popular belief guys were both more straight-forward with and more easily dissuaded from bullying. Besides, Steven Martin Evans had a core of pure pragmatism that prevented him from seeing others through Stacey’s rose colored glasses. And Ethan was even more sensible when it came to evaluating others. Unfortunately, I knew that both of them had gallantry issues and even if they didn’t, they wouldn’t know how to deal with female bullies.

So I started the summer a little worried. But over the summer, I came to a realization that made me feel completely stupid for not seeing it before. If Stacey had Brittany’s good, kind heart, Tiffany was her Santana…not literally since she wasn’t Stacey’s type, but the point still stood. Stacey was all hearts, flowers and rainbows and Tiffany was the reincarnation of an Irish Mafia strongman. She had all of Satan’s ruthless aggression and worse…she also had all of Mercedes’ ‘I grew up with two brothers’ creativity. She held Stevie and Ethan both in the same vein as she did Timmy and Teddy, or else I’d have match-made my ass off. Especially since both Bellatrix and Vivian-Leigh were fast tail little heifers, as Moms D called girls like that. I mean, yeah, they were cool people, I’d known them for a couple of years and I considered them to be like play cousins. They were officially part of Stevie’s crew, but I just didn’t like some of their ideas on how things should go.

A few weeks before the end of school, I’d been in the locker room getting it set up for the Cheerio tryouts that were happening after school. it happened to be when the two of them had PE, so I wasn’t shocked that they were there. But I sure as hell was shocked and appalled by the words that left their mouths. “Okay Bella, we need to make a pact here and now…over the summer…we’re getting our men.”

“I know, right? I mean, we’re almost teenagers and we’re still friendzoning it with the two hottest guys in our class. We’re the hottest girls they aren’t basically related to…and you know that our social rating is going to hit rock bottom if they ask out anybody other than the two of us. Okay maybe we’ll be safe if its Tiffany since she’s known the two of them even longer.” Bellatrix agreed.

“Well, I talked to my cousin Skyler. She is sixteen and she’s never not had a boyfriend since like before I was born. She said that the best way to get the guys to see us as love interests rather than just buddies was to show them how sexy we are.” She laid out a plan that started simply enough…bikinis and tank tops and shorty-shorts. All pretty reasonable and given that Bellatrix was twelve going on sixteen and Vivian-Leigh wasn’t too far behind, one that stood a good chance of working. I would have respected their plan more if everyone involved wasn’t near and dear to my heart. But then Bellatrix asked her what they should do if that didn’t work. “Well then, if they haven’t asked us to be their girlfriends by the time Stevie’s family goes on that Vacation they were telling us about, Skyler said that nothing made a man commit faster than getting a blow job. We can practice on cucumbers over the summer and if we’re their girlfriends, then, it’s not a bad ‘see you when you get back, think of me’ gift. And if we aren’t…well you know how Stevie and Ethan are, if we do anything sexual they’ll feel like they have to ask us to be their girlfriends. We can make them stay with us easy after that.”

I lost a lot of respect for them that day. I started to say something to them, but realized that if they wanted to play themselves, there wasn’t anything I could say that would stop them. Instead I gave Stevie and Ethan a heads up and just kept watch to make sure that things didn’t go too far. Though to be honest, there were times when we separated out from our larger clique into the smaller crews…especially on those days when we didn’t have the toddlers to watch over. It was funny, Stacey and Stevie each had their four person crew just like I had mine. Still, I knew that when we left to go on the road trip, Stevie was still calling Bellatrix his friend, not his girlfriend. Though, he also called her ‘his’ and said that he was ‘hers’, so that was apparently a thing. I didn’t find out for a couple of weeks exactly what that thing was. But it was definitely a thing.

I loved the road trip. It was literally like living like rockstars for three weeks. Bubbie Ruth and Nikki were with us as so was Beth. I was sure that three adults and nine kids in an RV sounded a hell of a lot more cramped, crowded and jank than our reality turned out to be. The RV was huge. It was so big that the parents who intended to drive it had to take classes and get a special license to even be allowed to drive it. There was a living room and kitchen and everything. Hell Bent and Moms D had the very back where they could have privacy, including their own bathroom. The rest of us had bunks. Bubbie They were big enough for Walter and Theo when Mr. Lester had the RV, which meant that the toddlers could all share a few of them when it was our turn. Of course, they had the bottom ones, which let me, Jake, Stacey and Stevie have the upper ones. Nik-Nak took a middle one and so did Bubbie. There was a half bath, in case we needed to use the loo while the parentals were in the back having not so quiet time. Each of our bunks had noise deadening curtains and they all had flip down Surfaces with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and everything. but the best part of the Surfaces was that they each had a pair of headphones with them for us to use…because Beth, Amara, Amaea, and Sloane tended to have the living room TVs for their viewing pleasure and there was only so much Elmo, Baby Einstein’s, and the like that this teenager could handle. 

While there was plenty of room for family togetherness and individual pursuits, there wasn’t a whole lotta room for storage. We’d each been told to pack for three weeks and Moms D had brought a big empty suitcase for each of us kids because…well, she and Bubbie both loved to shop, and school would be starting soon enough. Unfortunately, plans are often defeated by facts unknown before…the way we’d packed just didn’t work. So, at the first hotel we stayed at in Michigan, we took in all the actual luggage and reorganized everything we put two or three days’ worth of complete outfits and pjs into new large backpacks that materialized from somewhere. Each one was individualized for us. Mine was sky blue and had Bat-Girl on it. Stacey’s was lavender with the Powerpuff Girls on it. Of Course, Nikki’s was a Princess Leia one…the Sam was strong in that girl, genetics or no…Stevie’s was navy blue with the Black Panther on it. Anyway, the new system worked well, and it was really easy to unpack the backpacks into the laundry hampers that had been installed in the storage area. During that first week ‘on the road’ we traveled through three states and saw two different KAMA concerts. It would have been three, but Hudson materialized some tickets to the Pittsburgh Steelers preseason game that was being held the same night as one of KAMA’s concert…how she knew the family shame that Hell Bent was a closet Steeler’s fan, I don’t know…but then again, Stacey was pretty sure that Hudson knew everything. We all went and somewhat enjoyed the game. Most of the rest of us were only cool with the game because it was against the Vikings and we rejoiced because the Steelers got their asses handed to them.

After their show in Grand Rapids, which was a really epic show but the way, we took a red eye to LA. Not everyone, just Commune, me, Jake and Tessa, Hudson, Junior and Binkie and when we got there we met up with Lauren’s cousin Darcy and her boyfriend-slash-KAMA’s Rangeman in Charge. That may have been my favorite plane ride of my entire life. We flew first class and it was so ridic. Then we took a ‘car’ which was apparently Hollywood code for a limo to the Four Seasons hotel. I think Hudson was magical, because we were in the Presidential Suite. Cede explained it to us as we took the elevator up to the sixteenth floor. “When we decided that the three of you were coming with us to this red carpet, we decided that a suite the six of us can all stay in together would be best. Sam, Noah and I have one bedroom, Sarah, you and Tessa will share the other bedroom. Jake, there are three or more couches you can pick from, but there should be a rollaway bed in the sitting room off one of the bedrooms. Hudson has her own room, Binkie and Junior have another and the last of our rooms goes to Darcy and her man.”

It was official…the other half lived like KINGS. With all the changes our lives had undergone, I thought I’d been in a luxury hotel before. I was wrong. I was so freaking wrong. That room was the kind of room that lottery players dreamed of having a home like. It was amazeballs. We quickly picked our side of the suite. Not that that was easy, the whole room had amazing views, access to balconies and beautiful décor. The shower was…oh my damn…I loved that shower. I wanted to live in that shower. It was incredible. Because we’d taken a red eye flight and had the awards show that afternoon, we all just showered and took a nap. When we woke up, we showered again, lotioned and put on our foundation garments. Hudson and Binkie escorted us down to the spa where we got facials, manicures and pedicures. I had so much fun…just watching Noah, Sam and Jake get their nails done was hilarious to me.

Walking back into the suite, we saw that a large section of the living room had been turned into a dressing room. None of us had seen exactly what we were wearing before that moment. We met Bubbie’s friend who was a stylist and had worked with KAMA before, thankfully, he just let me call him Rob, his last name was something else. I also met Mr. Albert, Ms. Catrina and Ms. Catherine. The three of them handled our hair and makeup. They were all so nice. Ms. Catrina started on my hair. She curled my hair, as she cooed over my waist length tresses. She gave me a side part and pulled half up and back and pinned it in place with a pink diamante and jet crystal clip. Then she turned me over to the makeup guru. Mr. Albert had brought in special moisturizers that would protect my skin on the daily let alone from the makeup and everything that he was using on me that night. The makeup job he did looked natural and young and yet really cute and kind of hot. I loved it. The best part was that I got to keep the lipstick and gloss and the moisturizer. Technically, I got to keep the powder too, but that was given to Tessa to hold for me if I needed it that night. In real life, I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup for a couple more years.

Bubbie had taken care of my clothing from the skin out. She’d sent me out with the lingerie I’d donned after my shower. I’d never heard of Dorina, but I loved the black lacey Blair t-shirt bra and hipster panties that I was wearing. I felt so mature. I almost hated having to cover it with the black, Calvin Klein, sculpted full slip that she’d told me to wear also. I loved the Carolina Herrera, embellished, pink and black colorblock, sleeveless cocktail dress. But even better were the shoes. Noah brought me a very distinctive, goldish brown shoe box. “Alright Sare-Bear, I had to fight Cede to be able to be the one to give you these. We got you your dress and the earrings for tonight, but Moms D got you these. She got them for you earlier this summer after your report card came in and your principal noted that you’d had all As for all three years. Yeshiva, Sare-Bear, you have no clue how proud we all are of you. Not even the Elder Sibs or Cede made it through all of middle school without a single B. I’ve always known that you were smart. I mean, smarter than me, but damn, Munchkin…you’re truly, like, intelligent. I’m so proud that you’re my original little girl. Though, now I’m getting scared about you looking like that and being that smart…Nikki and Beth are going to be…”

“Even prettier and at least as smart if not smarter, Big Brother. Yeshiva is definitely gonna pay you back for your man-whore youth.” I laughed. He shushed me, but finally gave me the box. Inside were a pair of black lace over nude satin red bottom, peep toe pumps that I fell immediately in love with. “Oh my…Noah, what do you think Moms D will get me if I make Valedictorian?” I breathed as I pulled my new best friends out of their box. I knew that Mia would totally understand.

Noah just laughed. “If you manage that, I’ll buy you not only the car of your choice, but a ridiculously, like crazy expensive something from Tiffany’s.”

“Oh, you mean like this.” I gestured at the Star of David necklace I’d received for my previous birthday.

“No, I mean like a tiara or some shit that don’t even make no damn sense.”

I looked at him cautiously. “I’m gonna hold you to that.”

Thankfully he fought his usual response…a headlock and a noogie as he dragged me where he wanted me to go. Instead, he gave me his arm, like a Victorian gentleman and escorted me back into the main living room where Rob did something to the bottoms of my shoes while Cede helped me with the gold and paradise ruby threader earrings that complimented my dress so well. It seemed like we’d barely gotten back from the spa when we were all decked out and being whisked down to the ‘cars’. There wasn’t a single moment of the whole evening that I didn’t enjoy…I even liked disabusing the idiotic cameraman of his preconceived notions. Mia and Satan were both right, educating assholes really was fun. The Lyon brothers’ performance was the hottest one of the night. I’d made too much fun of Stacey’s old crush on Kurt to develop one on Jamal Lyon, but damn, did I want to. I screamed like crazy for KAMA and for Sam and Noah…even though I, personally thought that Mercedes Jones was way more of a hottie than all of Fifth Harmony combined. But, who was I to judge.

We met back up with the tour in Milwaukee. For the next couple of weeks, we either had ‘experiences’ or we stuck with the tour. We spent an extra day in Minneapolis to see of we could spot Prince. Thankfully, we were back with the tour when one of the Dam Bros got food poisoning, so Jake could fill in for him. We took a side trip between Albuquerque and Glendale to go and see the Grand Canyon. That was fun and yet amazingly terrifying. Thank Yeshiva Moms D talked Hell Bent out of doing one of those donkey rides down into the canyon things. I’d never thought that I was afraid of heights until I was looking down into that huge gash in the earth. I’d never before felt so small. The next night, we went to the concert in Phoenix. It probably surprised no body that Cede did several songs from the ‘Waiting to Exhale’ soundtrack…or that people loved her cover of ‘It Hurts Like Hell’. Seriously, there were like twenty-five grainy cell phone vids of that one cover on You-Tube before we made it halfway out of the state the next morning. It was weird the trip out had taken us three weeks to complete, but we were home by that Sunday for my birthday. Noah, Cede and Sam had sent my gift home with me, but not one of the adults would let me see what it was before the party.

It wasn’t a huge party, just a barbeque in the Jones’ back yard. Mom was in the midst of her first semester of Med school, George was in the midst of phase one of their massive residential build...and neither of them were great at party planning in the first place. But it was still an awesome party. Hell Bent and Sander made me beef ribs and some really awesome burgers. All my friends were there. we dominated to pool. Everything was awesome…for the first hour. Then Santana’s parents showed up. Not that I didn’t like Dr. Santi and Mrs. Maribel…I really did…but they brought with them someone I never expected to see again. “¡Feliz cumpleaños, Bombón!”

“KC…” I gulped. Shit…Keimen Cenon Lopez was Santiago Lopez second cousin. KC’s mother Adalia used to watch Puck and later me when we were little…their family was the main reason Santana and Puck had always been so tight and that Puck and I could both speak Spanish like natives. He had been cute as hell the last time I saw him, but Adalia had moved back to Puerto Rico when I was eight. Now KC was fine as fuck. He wasn’t super tall, but he was definitely taller than me. His hair somehow managed to be darker than Rigo’s without actually being black. He was built, but not swole…he looked like maybe he was into gymnastics or martial arts. “Been a long time. How are you?” I finally managed to remember that there were a ton of people in that yard including three mothers who were pretty much co-parenting me, my Bubbie who could smell salacious thoughts from a mile away, Hope and Cissa who would love to have blackmail material on me going into Cheerio Camp the next day, and various and a sundry people I didn’t want to know that standing in front of me for the first time in six years was the guy who was pretty much single handedly responsible for my fascination with men of Latin descent.

Maribel smiled happily, “Adalia wants him to go to college like Santiago and Santana so she sent him to stay with us and go to high school at McKinley. I remember how cute you two were playing together when you were little…so when I told him we’d been invited to your birthday party, he almost raced me to the car.”

KC came over and gave me a big hug. Oh hell, why did he have to smell as good as he looked. Just hugging him was making me want to strip him naked and ride him off into the sunset, party, friend and family be damned. That was not good. “Ummm, Bombón, you’re just as delicious as I remembered.” He whispered. So not good. everyone assumed that because I was Ruth Mayzer’s granddaughter, of course I was destined to be hypersexual. But the real blame landed squarely on the shoulders of the fourteen-year-old hugging me as if he never wanted to let me go. He had jumpstarted my hormones with his kisses when we were too little to do more than just give each other closed mouthed pecks on the lips. “I’ve missed you.”

“KC, I know what Bombón means…it’s not really an appropriate nickname.” I chided trying to be strong.

The look he gave me redefined smoldering. In fact, I was fairly certain my panties had caught fire. “Oh, I think it is even more appropriate, now that I know exactly what it is referring to.” He licked his lips leaving me no doubt in my mind that his was in the gutter.

I introduced him to Mia, Lisa and Rigo, and found out that he would be starting Cheerio Camp with me the next morning too. Apparently, his body came from both gymnastics and martial arts and his mother was positive that being one of the few, straight, male Cheerios would ensure his getting into the college of her dreams. She probably wasn’t wrong. As my party moved along, I realized that KC was making sure to make friends with my friends. He was going out of his way to get to know them and Stevie and Stacey and their crews. Something told me that the coming year was going to be one hell of a different year than I’d expected at the beginning of the summer. I was so not ready; but the anticipation might just kill me.

 

Down Bitch (YG)  
Stevie Evans PoV

There came a point in every younger brother’s life where the people around him started to realize that he was nothing like his elder brother. I was pretty sure that that time was rapidly approaching for my family. They thought that I was still the same little boy who treasured his big brother, Sam’s, approach to everything including how to treat women. The thing was that I had a hell of a lot more big brothers by the time I was thirteen than I’d had at eight. And I had been exposed to more ideas and experiences and peoples and their cultures than Sam had by that same age. Whether they meant to or not, everything I’d learned from my brothers and their relationships had coalesced to prove to me that Puck had it right with his silver rule. ‘We respect those who respect themselves’. See, Devon, Kevon, Sam, Noah, even Jake, they all had stories of chicks trying to push up on them despite their very committed relationships. In each of their stories, some of which I even witnessed myself, there was a very common ending. Real women respected themselves and the relationships men were in. Broads had to be reminded of said relationships, but usually got the point pretty quickly. Chicks were harder headed, but ultimately had enough self-respect not to embarrass themselves or the dude. But Hos those females had no respect for themselves, or for other’s relationships at all. They didn’t get the message until one of the elder brothers shut their asses down hard.

I’d known Bellatrix Thompson since my family had moved to Lima. I was pretty sure that I’d always known that she had ho tendencies, but I guess I thought I could change her. That by being her friend and having her around the real women in my family, she would leave those tendencies behind her. I’d really thought that I’d been successful. Narcissa, Bella’s little sister had long since seemed to pick up on the differences between Momma, Moms D and Becah and how Ms. Thompson acted and were treated by others. I thought Bella had done the same, until Sarah told me all about Bella and Vivian-Leigh’s locker room planning session. Of course I told Ethan all about it too. Now Ethan, he may have been even more no-nonsense when it came to life than I was. He had loyalty, but he was very much quick to tell people when he thought they were being stupid and he was not one to suffer fools lightly. Case in point, his older brother, Aidan…when Aidan had been fucking things up with Tessa, Ethan had tried to point out the errors in his thinking to Aidan long before he made his ultimate bad decision. Aidan had told Ethan that he was too young to understand. Later once Tessa was happy with Joe and Joe had shown that he had all the backbone that Aidan lacked, Aidan had confessed to Ethan that he’d been right all along.

Ethan had smirked and nodded as I laid out their plan. “So, they have their plan…we should have our own. First thing though, do you want Bella for your official girlfriend?” He better than anybody knew how I’d originally felt about that girl. I’d hoped that she would be my Tonya or my Patrice.

But neither of my big sisters would have ever had that little respect for themselves. I shook my head. “I think that I kinda lost all respect for both of them.” I admitted.

He nodded solemnly in agreement. “Yeah, Viv was never gonna be more than a friend…she reminds me too much of my mother…in way too many ways.” His smirk returned. “So how far are we willing to let them go?”

My own answering smirk was probably just as wicked. “I’m willing to see how far they will actually go.” I answered truthfully. I had no clue how much that one sentence would ensure that I had an amazing summer. Like seriously, Bellatrix had started getting breasts when we were ten…three years later she had at least C cup breasts, a slim but not too skinny waist, wide hips and the cutest little bubble booty. Vivian-Leigh wasn’t too far off in her own curves, smaller breasts, but still at least a full B, smaller C, tiny waist, decent butt for a white girl…overall not bad. She was just blonde and blue eyed and looked as much like me as Stacey did. I was used to seeing Bella’s body in leggings and tee shirts, jeans and sweaters…all manner of mostly age appropriate clothing. That summer, her skirts and shorts got shorter. Her shirts got tighter and the scoop neck tank top seemed have replaced every regular tee-shirt she owned. But probably the best change…the bikinis. Every single one piece that she’d worn the summer before disappeared. Yeah, she had probably out grown them, but they were all replaced by two piece swim suits, more than half of which were strapless…those were just asking for trouble. I will say the girls did start off fairly subtle. Wearing less clothes…brushing up against us as we played in the pool…laughing at jokes that would usually have earned us eye rolls. That only lasted a week or two. One thing both Viv and Bella had in common…neither of them were patient…like at all.

With Stacey and Tiffany going with Sarah to help train Narcissa and her fellow Junior Cheerio, three days a week, the pool belonged to my crew from one to four. And as much as I loved Momma, she often kept Double A&S home and got Beth, Jeanie, and Robyn on top of those three. When she had six kids under six to watch over, they took precedent, so the supervision wasn’t as close as it could have been. We always offered our help but we were almost always shooed away and told to go have fun. And fun was certainly had. “We should practice kissing.” Vivian-Leigh suggested very shortly after we got into the pool one summer afternoon. “Bella, you practice with Stevie and I’ll practice with Ethan.”

There was no time at all for me to say yeah or nay. Because the second Viv said my name, I had an arm full of slippery, wet chocolate. Kissing Bella for real, not just simple pecks on the cheeks or forehead was an experience that I would never forget. She was wearing a strapless bikini that was a pretty shade of aqua blue and had plants on it. It had strings that made me believe that I could tug on one and relieve her of the cloth all together. Her lips, god damn her lips were full and soft and silky smooth and tasted like sin and passion and I knew it was stupid, I knew it was wrong…but I also knew in that moment that I was going to take whatever she was willing to give me. I’d just have to be careful not to promise shit in return and not to do something really stupid like fall ass over tea-kettle. She gave a lot too. That first kiss deepened until she and I were straight up making out in the pool and I had both my hands in the confines of her aqua blue hipster bikini bottoms groping the hell out of her ass. The usual pool games, Marco Polo, Shark in the Pool, Popsicle, Chicken Fight, they were all given very salacious twists that afternoon. I ended up getting my hands all over Bella that day. I was not one to lie much, especially not to myself. If Stacey, Sarah and their crews hadn’t gotten home when they did, no way would Ethan or I have stopped groping those girls until they stopped us…if they stopped us.

The next day I both received and gave out my first hickeys. A week later, Momma had a meeting to go to at her school, so the four of us were banned from the pool until she got home. That meant we had to chill in the game room. She’d even told us in advance so Ethan, Bella and Viv didn’t bother to wear their suits, though they did bring them just in case she got home early enough for us to go in. Momma gave me a serious talking to before she left, if she thought, even for a second, that I wasn’t a virgin when she got home, I would have NO freedom again until I was at least sixteen. After seeing how pissed she’d gotten over the whole ‘Nikki’s Mom’ situation…I knew she was as serious as a heart attack. Not to mention that I wasn’t really ready for sex. Not the real thing anyway. I knew that Momma had talked with Ms. Thompson, Mr. Harding and Ms. Marshall about her meeting and everything…no one in our family talked to Mrs. Harding about anything. We kind of hated her. Anyway, she’d given all the parents the chance to let their kids stay at home or come after she got home…but none of them seemed to care that it would be four teenagers alone for an afternoon in very traditional heterosexual pairings and everything. Bella got there maybe fifteen minutes after Momma and the girls left. She looked so damn hot. She was wearing a pretty, flowy, hippy looking, dark blue tank top and a light blue, flowy, hippy looking, ruffly skirt that seemed to be held on her hips by just a knot on the side. “Hey Stevie, Sorry I’m early.”

“Not a problem. You can help me decide what to order for lunch…Bella Notta’s or Bellacino’s.” I said easily, letting her in and sent her on down to the game room. I’d been playing Call of Duty for the better part of the morning, but I had already taken the time to get it set up for movie watching or whatever we decided to do to kill time that afternoon. We quickly agreed on Bellacino’s pizza. The food was better but I was kind of loyal to Bella Notta’s since it was where Sam had worked when we were poor. I placed the order for two large Bellacino’s Prides and mentally thanked Sam, Mercy and Puck for the fact that I could do so easily and without having had to have begged Momma for cash before she left.

Bella came back up a few minutes after I got off the phone to wait with me for the others, or the Pizza guy…whoever got there first. I was a hugger by nature, so the fact that Bella came over and leaned into me where I was leaning against the counter wasn’t suspect. I pulled her in for a hug, which she turned into a kiss. My hands found her waist and slipped under her shirt. “Little Miss Bella, Where is your bra?” I grumbled against her lips when all I felt was the deliciously smooth expanse of her back.

She leaned back. “It’s downstairs in the bag with my swimsuit…why? You want me to put it back on?” she challenged.

“I should say yes.” I told her seriously. “We both know that you’re writing checks that neither of us are ready to cash.”

She chuckled. My favorite thing about Bellatrix Thompson was that she never giggled, ever. “I’m not going all the way…I agree we’re not ready for that. But we can definitely play around.”

I looked her dead in her gorgeous brown eyes. “Bells, this isn’t the way to get what you want. You and Vivian-Leigh should have more respect for yourselves and for me and Ethan.”

She smirked up at me. “Boo-Thang, you know that I have the utmost respect for myself and for you. Viv has her plan. But I know you. You’re already mine. You’re never have brought me around your family all the time…not now that Amara and Amaea are old enough to see everything and it make an impression on who they are gonna grow up to be, if you didn’t consider me to be yours. I know Ms. Dani thinks I’m hot in the pants…she’s right. But I wouldn’t play like this with anybody but you.” She kissed me softly. “I know that I can go as far with you as we want to go and nobody but the two of us and maybe Ethan will know about it. At least in our school…we both know that you tell your big brothers everything.”

“I don’t tell them everything.” I argued. “Most things, but not everything.”

Bella laughed at me. “Boy please, I don’t know who you’ll be calling tonight…Probably Noah…Sam’s too goody-goody to confess that your girl wonders if nymphomania is a real thing because she thinks she might have it.”

I moaned. “That wasn’t even fair. How you gonna say that to me after you just said that neither of us are ready to go that damn far?”

She gave me an unconcerned shrug. “I don’t lie to you Stevie. I’ve lied for you. ‘No Ms. Tuttle, Stevie didn’t shove Brian’s head into the locker’.”

“What? He grabbed your ass. He deserved it.” I defended myself. I had to admit, Bella was right. She’d been a total ride or die chick for the last four years. “And that wasn’t a lie. I didn’t shove his head into the locker. He hit the locker after I punched him in the gut.”

Her pretty brown eyes rolled in her head. “Stevie…you punched him in the stomach. Then, when he bent over, you shoved him into the lockers. So how was that not a lie?

“Anyway,” I directed us back to the subject at hand. “So you’re not throwing yourself at me trying to get me to put a label on us?”

There was a derisive scoff. “No. I’m not even throwing myself at you. I’m groping the hell out of you for my own amusement and letting you grope me for the same reason. I don’t need to force you to label us. I’m your Tricie…and you’re my Kevon. I’m your Cede and you’re my Noah.”

“Not your Sam?”

She shook her head and licked those sexy ass lips. “Naw, you know I love your brothers, all of them…but Sam and Dev…they are too… they’re nice. I like that you’ve got some thug in you.”

I thought about it for a while. Luckily, the Pizza guy showing up gave me time to think. For one thing, I realized that I probably should have talked things through with her earlier. Like right after Sarah told us what she had overheard. Still, I was really relieved to find out that she really was who I’d thought she was and that she saw us the same way I saw us. The other thing I realized as I was taking receipt of those amazeballs smelling discs of cheesy, meaty goodness was that Vivian-Leigh needed some Jesus. “You’d better warn your girl then, ‘cause while you and me are on the same page, she and Ethan are not…like at all.”

“Stevie, I’ve talked to that girl until I’m sick of hearing my own voice, and you know how much I love to hear myself talk. She don’t listen. I swear, her cousin is the worse influence ever.” She confided as we took the pizza downstairs.

I guess I should have been surprised to find Ethan already down there, but I’d left the walkout doors unlocked and he knew the house well enough not to bother with the stairs when he knew where we were going to end up anyway. “You two look cozy.” He teased.

Bella laughed. “Don’t be jealous, Eth…we’re gonna find you a girl who doesn’t give you creepy-incest feels, and then you can be as happy as me and Stevie.” That girl was way too brutal when there were no other females around. She used to be like that all the time. I still cringed when I remembered her introduction to Uncle Saul. “Though, I notice that those creepy-incest feels aren’t stopping you from getting your mack on all the time.”

“Hey, she might look enough like my mom to be my sister, but we aren’t actually related.” He pointed out with a wicked grin. “Besides, if she’s gonna throw it, somebody is gonna catch it. Better me than somebody like Brian Danvers who we both know won’t care about making sure she stops when she should and will tell the whole damn world all the wheres and hows.”

There really wasn’t any arguing with that. Not that there was time. The doorbell rang signaling the arrival of Vivian-Leigh at that moment anyway. I let her in and my jaw hit the floor. Bella was dressed like a sexy hippy…a really sexy hippy. But she had arrived looking boho-chic. I couldn’t help but wonder how Viv had managed to get out of her house looking like that. Her skirt was psychedelic paisley…but that wasn’t what made me take a half step back. No, the problem was that it was seriously short. Like if it wasn’t for the flouncy part, it would have been belt not a skirt. The girl was only five foot two…how on earth did she even find a skirt that short. The top was simple. It picked up the cream color of the skirt’s trippy pattern and would have been fine, a simple ribbed halter top…no big deal. Except that she was so not wearing a bra and the shirt was not only light in color, but of a fairly thin material.

“Get in here before somebody sees you and tells my mother that I had a hooker come over while she was gone.” I snatched her inside.

“Oh don’t be a worry wart. I was wearing a maxi dress over it. Do you really think my mom would let me walk over here in this?” she chided mockingly.

“Why would you want to walk around dressed like that? Rape is a thing that happens, ya know.” I shot back. Not that how a woman dressed had anything to do with anything but still men were both assholes and animals.

“Not in Lima it doesn’t.” She returned both falsely and unconcerned. I rolled my eyes as she headed down to join Ethan and Bella in the game room. Thank God that Stacey and Sarah weren’t that foolish or naive.

Bella and I kind of wanted to not be there when those two got up to whatever they decided to get up to, so we took one of the pies up to the family room. The TV in there wasn’t as big, but it was still big enough. So we chilled out and watched Kingsman: The Secret Service…for a while. Then we started making out. I don’t know if it was the rather heavy conversations that we’d had or the shock of Vivian-Leigh’s appearance, but I’d completely forgotten that Bella had taken off her bra earlier. I was the happiest thirteen year old boy in Lima when I remade that discovery. It was like finding treasure twice in the same place. But I knew that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and I couldn’t really think because my mind was busy going ‘yea boobies’ over and over again. “Shit, Bells…I kind of want to latch on and suck them until you have to punch me to get me to let loose. Show me what to do.”

She laughed, which made them wobble and jiggle gloriously. “Just touch them. Hold them. I love the way it feels when I brush my fingers over my nipples. Or when I kind of tickle my areolas. I do want to feel your mouth on me. Hell, I’ve dreamed of it. But other than my own fingers, we’re learning together.”

I so loved that girl. I did as she told me. I used my fingers first. Playing, teasing…I kept it all gentle. I’ve seen enough comediennes talking about idiot guys who try to turn nipples into radio nobs to be able to avoid that pit fall. When I leaned down and licked the pretty brown nubbin that was calling my name, Bella cooed and her whole body shivered. “I think you liked that.” I whispered, probably stupidly.

She leaned up and kissed me hard, “I liked it and I want more.”

So, of course, I gave her more. I licked and sucked and played to my heart’s content. There may have been some dry humping. I don’t know who was more surprised when her hips hunched up into mine and she let out an adorable little sound that sent pure, unadulterated pleasure through me. So much so that I came in my pants. I’d have been embarrassed, but I knew that I wasn’t alone at all. “I blame you for this.” I panted when I could speak again.

“Nope, all your fault. Good job though. I’ve never come that hard by myself.” She moaned and shimmied her hips against mine…

“Okay, I’mma need you to stop that.” Of course she did it again. “Stop Bellatrix. I need to go change…stop making it worse.”

She tilted her head curiously and I just knew that her question was going to either be really good or really bad. “What does it taste like?”

I was sure that I gave her the strangest look ever. “I can honestly say that I have no idea what it tastes like. I’ve never tasted my own cum. Have you ever tasted yours? What does it taste like?”

She shrugged. “Of course I’ve tasted mine. It comes from me why shouldn’t I have tasted it. I don’t know how to describe it…tangy is the closest word I can think of. Can I taste yours?”

In that moment I longed for Jake’s or Noah’s inherent ability to smoothly answer shit like that. “Not today.” I finally croaked out. “I’m pretty sure that we’ve already gone farther than we should have. So, I’m gonna go and get cleaned up in my bathroom…you know where the half bath is. Let just take things slow. If you’re mine and I’m yours, then we have all the time in the world.”

She kissed me and nodded. “Yeah, we’ve got time. But I’m gonna need more of that at least.”

I couldn’t resist giving her one last kiss. “Me too.” I said honestly. We both went and got cleaned up. She snuck down and got her bra and replaced it.

I didn’t take long to get cleaned up. I was a typical teenage boy, unfortunately that meant that I was pretty used to quick clean-up of that particular situation. Though the blame usually lay in my dreams, not my reality. When I got back to the family room, Bella was sitting there looking both as innocently pretty as she had when she first arrived and yet still just as sexy as she had when she was half naked on the couch ten minutes earlier. She was shaking her head in a manner that only Black girls really, successfully managed at such a young age. “What is we gone do with our friends?” she asked as soon as I entered the room.

I knew from Hell Bent, Dev, Kev and countless comedians that the popular expression ‘what is we gone do’ meant that someone was either in trouble or trying to joke their way out of trouble. “Umm, not sure how to answer that without know what they did.” I took the seat next to her on the large, comfortable couch. I pulled her in next to me. She was a great cuddle. And I no longer needed to watch where my hands went any more.

“I’ll have specifics later, but I’m seventy-eight, seventy-nine percent sure that Viv can tell me exactly what it tastes like, at least as far as Ethan’s goes.”

“Well, Damn.” I muttered. “I thought that y’all’s plan wasn’t supposed to go that far until, like, August.”

“As I understood things, HER plan was to wait until just before you left for your family’s road trip.” Bella said worriedly. “We should have stayed all together. She probably thought that you were asking me to be your girlfriend and got desperate.”

I sighed. “We didn’t all stay together because she came over wearing a belt with a flounce for a skirt and no bra or panties. Something tells me that she had some shit planned before she left her home.” I was pretty sure that I was telling the truth. Because no girl that I knew went around guys not wearing panties without being very, very sure of the results they desired.

“So, what do we do?”

I shrugged. “I guess we have to talk to our friends and make sure that know that they need to think these things through. That why we say we’re not ready…we both know that its not physical readiness that we were talking about. I’m not ready to be a dad. You aren’t ready to be a mom. I know that those are the worse case scenario, but they are a definite possibility. Look at Puck, he was my age when Nikki’s mom got pregnant.”

“My mother would literally kill me if I got pregnant. But I’d be disappointed in myself. I want to be a lawyer one day. I want to run for office one day. How can I do either of those things if I become a mom before I even become a high schooler?” Bella cosigned mine and confessed her own worries.

Ultimately, all we could do was talk to Ethan and Vivian-Leigh, which we both did separately. Ethan assured me that he wasn’t going to let things go too far. He wasn’t ready for the kind of commitment that Vivian-Leigh wanted…at least not with her. I tried to back track. I tried to convince him that rather than keeping to our original plan and seeing how far Viv would go, because she’d already gone as far as we’d thought that she would possibly even consider going, that he should talk to her and tell her that he knew she was trying to manipulate him and he wasn’t interested in being her boyfriend…before things got out of hand. But he was so sure that he could handle it. That he was the one in control and he was playing her. Still, my talks with Ethan went better than Bells’ chats with Vivian-Leigh. By the fourth of July, things between those two were tense as hell. I was pretty sure that they were managing to keep it on the DL, but they were barely talking to each other. Bellatrix thought that Vivian-Leigh was being stupid and fully ho-ish, and Vivian-Leigh thought that Bella was being prudish and superior and trying to make Viv look like a fool since Bells had landed her man. Nothing Bella could say could convince her to stop playing games and woman up.

So while we were dealing with our completely unable to listen to rational advice friends, Bella and I took the time to hang out more with Stacey and her crew, the Murphy Triplets. Before I became friends with Ethan when we were Junior Titans, me, Timmy and Teddy were thick as thieves. But I got into sports, which they both hated, so while we were still friends and everything, we just weren’t as close as we had been. Though, I had to admit, they were always my first choice after Dad and Sam for a movie marathon. They had great Sci-Fi taste. Stacey and Bells had always gotten along great. There was no way I’d have ever had even a crush on someone Stacey didn’t like. Bellatrix may have been my soul mate, but Stacey was the other half of me. I wasn’t sure anyone who wasn’t a twin or multiple could understand it…but that was just how it was. Thankfully, me and Stacey had had the Triplets as friends for a long time, so we’d pretty always had someone who understood with us.

The summer was altogether too awesome for words. Bells and I got closer than I even realized was freaking possible. We never went any further than making out with some really heavy petting and not so dry humping. There was something just too amazing about making Bella cum. I didn’t not enjoy orgasming myself, but the best part was the quietly moaned “hu-hun-hunh” sound that she made when she orgasmed that just made me feel on top of the world. I did feel the need to check myself. Thankfully the Elder Sibs came home for Father’s Day weekend and I was able to get Kev all to myself for a conversation.

‘So little bro, I see you and your Little Villainess are close as ever?” he teased me gently with the family’s older men’s nickname for Bella.

“Closer…um…Kev…”

“Shit Stevie, if you got her pregnant you need to be talking to Noah, not me.” he shot back quickly.

I shook my head vehemently. “We haven’t gone that far yet, Kevon.” I stressed his full name so he would understand that I was serious. “I’m worried that maybe what we’re getting up to is too much but we sure as hell haven’t gotten up to that.”

Kevon sighed in relief. “Sorry, but Mom does say that Bellatrix is a little fast tail.” He defended his conclusion jumping with an apologetic smile.

My returned smile was both guilty and goofy. “Oh, she is. But in her family, they call it being ‘hot in the pants’.”

“Exactly how far have the two of you gone, Lil Brother?” He asked hesitantly.

“Not that far.” I reassured him. “Maybe second base.”

He didn’t look very reassured. “My generation’s second base, or your generation’s second base?”

“There’s a difference?”

Kev shrugged. “According to an article Tricie was telling me about the other day, there is a huge difference. So, without being gross or specific or grossly specific…give me a summary of what you two have done.”

I thought about how to explain without over explaining or telling him more than either one of us was comfortable with. “I guess it probably best summarized as ‘yeah boobies’ and hunchy-hunchy?” I finally said, praying that he understood.

“My boy!” He crowed proudly, giving me dap before looking worried again. “Over or under the clothes.”

I was sure that my face was red enough to throw off heat, but I answered honestly. “Umm, under ‘yeah boobie’, and over hunchy-hunchy.”

There were more daps given and pride conveyed. “That’s okay then. You two are only a little further along than me and Trice were at your age. And a hell of a lot less far than we were at the same point after we made things officially-official.”

“Huh, what about Dev?” The whole world knew about Noah’s sexual history at our age. And I knew for a fact that Sam was on his second girlfriend by my age and had gone at least as far as Ethan and Viv had gone with the second. He wasn’t always a good guy either. But he hadn’t actually lost his real virginity until about a year or so before we moved to Lima. I swear he and Noah used to forget I was just a doorway away half the time when they were both in our bathroom at the Jones’ and even closer in that damn hotel room.

Kev looked around to make sure that neither Dev or Tonya were anywhere near at hand. Not that they could have been…not with out both of us knowing. But still. “Devon can never know that I told you this. Seriously man…never.” I swore that I would never tell a soul, except maybe Bella. “Look, Devon and Tonya had some weirdness in the sexual side of their relationship. When they got together, they immediately knew that they were it for each other. So, they kind of skipped from making out to third base not too long after they started dating and then they stayed there for the next two or three years.”

“Whoa.” I was more than a little shocked. Dev and Tonya both seemed so nerdy.

“Look, I know that you hear a lot from all of us. But at this point it sounds like you and your Little Villainess have handled this the smart way. You’re doing what works for the two of you. Don’t go any further than you’re ready for. You know that no two relationships are the same. All you and your girl need to make sure that you talk to each other at every stage of the game. Even if she is ‘hot in the pants’ you don’t have to do anything that you aren’t comfortable doing. And you NEVER do anything that she isn’t comfortable doing.”

I had the best big brothers. I told Bella all about the conversation I had with Kev and shared the important parts about not going farther than HE was comfortable with and how he didn’t have to try and keep up with anyone else’s relationship with Ethan. I know that Bells tried again to talk with Vivian-Leigh…but it didn’t seem all that successful. But me and Bellatrix, we were golden. We talked every day, even when I was in my bunk in the RV. Stacey and I still had the same kind of little kid cell phone that Nikki had, and we shared it. But Bella’s home phone number was one of the ones we could call. There was so much that we talked about. The present, the past, the future…it was great learning things that she’d not shared until we were completely on the same page. I knew that I wanted to start the new school year with the whole school on notice that she was mine and I was hers. I tried to come up with something new and different. Something that no one I knew had done before. That meant that promise rings, serenades, and somewhat embarrassing grand gestures were out.

It was when we were at a mall in Des Moines, that Stacey gave me the perfect idea. “You could each wear the other’s name on a necklace. But it would have to be something that you are good wearing at least once a week or you know that the girls will start spreading break up rumors and trying to create a wedge.”

“Help me find the perfect thing?” I begged. But I knew she had my back. She always did.

We looked all over that mall and finally a lady in Nordstrom Rack gave us the perfect thing. Thank goodness Stacey had never met a stranger. “You’ll have to order her necklace off the Nordstrom’s site, because the only ones in the stores just have common girl names on them…but it is lovely.” She showed me a silver personalizable bar pendant necklace that really would be perfect for Bella. Then she suggested Zales for my necklace. I had to order it too, but I love it and knew that I would wear it all the time. It was men's diamond-cut uppercase name necklace in sterling silver too. thankfully mine was under two hundred because they said that it would take up to six weeks. But for an extra fifty bucks, it could be rushed. I paid the rush. As much as I had liked the one in Nordstrom, given the cost difference, Stacey and Bubbie both suggested that I check through Zales’ site for something comparable. Thankfully I was able to drill the multitude of choices down to under three hundred. But then on the first page of those, I found a great one that literally looked like a feminine version of mine. I was able to rush it too. I pretty much emptied my ready cash on those two purchases. I was so grateful that I’d gotten Sarah’s gift the month before. 

I had the best time on the trip. Seeing Sarah, Jake and Tessa on the red carpet was really cool. But seeing Jake up singing background for our siblings was epic. The Grand Canyon was freaking awesome. I kind of wished that we’d had the time to do the donkey ride down into the canyon. But we had the babies with us and everything, so it wouldn’t have worked. And to be honest, Sarah looked like the thought freaked her all the way out. not that she would ever admit that to anyone. She was Puck’s little sister for a reason. The drive back to Lima was wicked cool. Hell Bent and Bubbie were both able to drive the RV, so they took turns and we made it home in time for Sarah to have a birthday party. I think that she liked the Instax Mini 8 Camera that I got her. The dude that came with the Lopezes though, I’d have said that it was love at first site, but it turned out that they’d known each other before we moved to Lima.

Bellatrix was there and while she’d seen all my pictures and we’d talked every day, we’d still missed the hell out of each other. Especially since I was at Titan’s camp that whole week after we got back. Ethan and I were still the water boys and junior managers for them. The first night of the camp, Ethan had confided in me that he’d had to cut Viv off completely when she started trying to go even further than third base. She’d not taken it well at all and had stopped talking to all of us all together. I was relieved when the necklaces came in that Friday. I managed to get both of our moms to let us go out that Saturday night, just the two of us to dinner. We were stuck with Breadstix, not many other places trusted two thirteen-year-olds not to dine and dash. But it felt like a real date and that was the important thing. After we finished our dinner. I gave her the gift bag. I’d tried wrapping the boxes, it hadn’t gone well. “Bellatrix Lyra Thompson…at the beginning of the summer I swore that we would not be labeling our relationship at all because I thought that you were going to use that, admittedly beautiful, face and body of yours to manipulate me. I’m sorry for my lack of faith in you. You knew me better than I knew you or myself. Thank you for loving me enough to forgive me and being true to yourself even in the face of some pretty jank advice.” She pulled out the two identical Zales boxes.

When she opened them to find the similar styled but different named necklaces, she gave me a bright smile. “These are gorgeous, Stevie.”

“Yeah, they’re not really both for you. the one that reads Steven…that one you’ll wear. I’ll wear the one that has your name on it.”

“Is this our version of being Facebook official?” she teased gently.

I nodded. “I tried to make sure that they would be something that we’d both want to wear a lot.”

“Well, I love them. They are perfectly complementary and yet your name is clearly meant for me and mine for you.” she leaned over the table and pressed her lips to mine.

It was crazy, looking into those beautiful dark chocolate eyes, I knew that our future together was written in the stars as surly as the constellations my Little Villainess was named for. I wasn’t starting high school. I wasn’t starting college, but I made my first real, true steps into the future that night the same as Sarah would make the following day and Tessa would make just a few days later. It had been the very best summer of my life to that point. I had no idea how the coming fall would turn out…but I couldn’t wait.

 

I Just Can’t Stop Loving You (Michael Jackson)  
Stacey Evans PoV

I loved my big, loud, crazy family…mainly because as much as I loved them, it was really easy to get lost in the crowd when you needed the time to think something through. It had been really hard to find time to myself when it was just me Stevie and Sam…even before we were living in that horrible little room at that motel. Thinking deep thoughts about your sexuality and orientation almost always demanded quiet time. For a while, when I first admitted to myself that I wasn’t the hetero-normative little angel, Mommy and Daddy probably expected me to be, I actually blamed it on the time we’d spent living in that motel. I’d seen quite a few things I was pretty sure Sammy and my parents had no clue nine, almost ten, year old me had seen. The one that stuck out the most was the guy who’d had three of the ladies who worked the rooms, and I didn’t mean the maids, with him. Ever since I was little, I’d had a very bad habit of being where I wasn’t necessarily supposed to be…and finding hidey holes that people didn’t even know existed. There was a weird crawl space in the vents in that motel that I’d found, and I could crawl through and look in the other rooms. I was small and, once Quinn put me and Stevie to bed, she pretty much just assumed that we were down for the night and spent the rest of her time on her phone talking with Santana and Brittany. 

Sneaking into the vent in our room was easy. One night I crawled through the vent all the way to the end and that was when I saw the four of them. I’d watched for an hour. The guy was okay…the kind that made thirteen-year-old me wonder why he was paying for sex. But the ladies…they were so beautiful. I’d seen two of them around the motel a few times. They were pretty nice and one of them, Celia, always told me to stay in school and study hard so I didn’t end up like her. I really didn’t understand why she did the job she did. But anyway, the guy was really only with the one lady I didn’t recognize while Celia and her friend Malika made love to each other for his entertainment. Before that night, I’d kind of had a little crush on Noah and a bigger one on Kurt at least I found them both really cute…but after that night, my crushes were firmly rooted in Santana and Mercedes- and Celia and Malika. They were all really pretty…sue me.

Thankfully, neither of them had ever asked me why I spent so much time hugging them for the rest of that year. By the time Santana and Brittany had pulled Artie into their relationship, I’d outgrown that crush. But my next crush wasn’t a guy either. None of my crushes since that night when I watched those gorgeous women making love had been guys. I tried. I tried to like Aidan, or Finn or any of Sam’s friends. The closest I came to catching a crush on a guy during that entire three year time span was when I had a crush on Unique. Some how I didn’t think that counted. Still, I dreamed all the same things I’d always dreamed…getting married, having babies, becoming a kick ass doctor like House or Mindy on the Mindy Project or maybe a large domestic animal vet, then I could take over MeMaw’s farm. But where before the other person in the wedding, the other parent of the baby, the person I told about my day, it had always been an abstract, by the time I was eleven I knew that it was another girl. By the time I was thirteen, I knew that that girl was a woman of color, and probably had some seriously large boobs. Yup, I could say without a doubt that I definitely had the same taste in girls as my brothers. However, I wasn’t as exclusive in my thinking as them. Or maybe I just listened when Noah said that there was beauty to be found in every woman.

Everyone in the family was convinced that I was just like my mother. A sweet, southern lady with a touch of Puckett bite. But the truth was that I was equally my father. I had his sense of humor. Leia was my favorite of the Disney Princesses. I had Momma’s temper, but I had Daddy’s ability to forgive and forget…Momma was a grudge holder, like Sam. Instead, I blew up quickly, but cooled off just as fast. Like Momma, I looked angelic…blonde hair, blue eyes. I was shorter than I think Momma was at my age, but not a short as some other women in our family. I was, maybe ironically, a lot girlier than my mom. I loved pink and dresses and longed for the day when I’d be able to wear more makeup than just subtly colored lip gloss. I loved who I was and somehow that translated into me pretty much loving almost everyone else. I was a happy person. I liked people until they gave me a real reason not to like them. My outlook on life had made me who I was and I wasn’t going to let that change for anyone. 

It took me a long while to grow comfortable with my own sexuality. It wasn’t anything my parents or any of the adults in the family caused. One thing I could say was that our entire family was supportive and inclusive and they offered all of us unconditional love and care. One of the things that took me a while to just deal with mentally was looking back at my crushes on Noah and Kurt. I tended to be a fairly smart kid and I had the whole internet at my fingertips. I read a million blogs and articles and came to realize that it was kind of normal. Not every gay or lesbian kid experienced early crushes on some one of the opposite sex but some did. There were even theories that those crushes were simply finding the person admirable or aesthetically pleasing. I got that for sure. I still admired both Noah and Kurt. They were so very different, but they both had such amazing hearts and strength. But mainly, I admired how they were always so true to themselves.

That summer as I got ready to enter eighth grade, I started considering ‘coming out’ to my family. I mean, it wasn’t like I hadn’t told anybody. Stevie, me and Sarah had no secrets from each other. Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. We didn’t share other people’s secrets with each other; that would have been wrong. But we didn’t keep our own stuff secret from each other. I’d told Stevie all about the things I saw during my forays into the hotel vents. He’d joined me a time or two, but we never saw anything that cool again. Sarah was probably the biggest reason I accepted that I liked girls instead of boys. When I told her, she’d just smirked at me and said. “And Bubbie likes girls and boys and she’s completely awesome. You know I love Ellen…but if you start dressing like her…then I’d have to disown you.”

“Shut up.” I responded exasperatedly, shoving my sister gently. “She dresses fine.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “No, her wife dresses fine, I’d even go so far as to say that she dresses well. Ellen dresses as boringly as a dude. Pants, pant suits…more pants. It’s just so boring.”

“It’s funny…you’re only girly about your hair and fashion but you love boys. I’m girly about everything and I love girls. We’re weird.”

Stevie joined the conversation at that point. “Everybody’s weird. It’s just that only those of us with intelligence acknowledge that simple truth.”

We shared a laugh but knew that he was right. I loved having my twin and our third, as we started calling Sarah by the end of that very first summer after our family became intrinsically intertwined. Stevie and I had always known without words what each other was thinking. Though she was a year older and a grade ahead of us, Sarah learned to read us almost as well. As we got older and were allowed more independence, she brought in her friends Mia and Rigo to join us and the Murphy Triplets. Stevie grew close to Ethan and his Bella. It was almost strange to me when I realized that Tiffany was my best, non-family, friend. I’d never thought that I would have anyone other than Stevie and Sarah that I was that close to. It wasn’t immediate, for the first two or three years we were friends, we were each other’s other option. We played together when our brothers wanted to play with another boy. Then as time passed we got closer. I think part of it was that we each understood the closeness multiples shared and other kids our age either gawked at our sibling bond or scoffed at it.

I used Tiffany as a test subject that summer. I told her that I was a lesbian and she just shrugged. “Okay. Ohh, are you into me?” she seemed almost happy at the though. Which was a little weird to me since when she’d started ‘taking care of business’…her euphemism for masturbation… she had confessed that it was to thoughts of Chris Hemsworth as Thor. I’d not been yet ready to admit that my star crush was Salma Hayek. I was pretty sure that my parents worried I was having a religious crisis as many times as I watched Dogma the summer after fifth grade.

I gently shook my head. “Sorry, you know I love you, but not like that.”

She just pouted. “Nobody likes me like that. I tried to get Brian Danvers to flirt with me, nothing…and you know he’s a total horn-dog.”

I just laughed. “Tiffany, first of all, Tommy and Teddy beat Brian Danvers all the way up in third grade, of course he’s not going to flirt with you. Second of all, how have you missed the fact that Jamie Thomas, he was in Sarah’s class when we were in fourth grand and she was in fifth. All last year, he looked at you like you are the physical embodiment of feminine perfection.”

“Well, of course he did. I am. Until someone stands me next to you, the perfect girl next door, or Sarah the brunette bombshell.” She groused with a roll of her huge brown eyes. 

It was my turn to scoff and roll my eyes. “No, you’re just a cute, petite and curvy, redhead. We should all learn to play different instruments and form a girl group.”

“We’d need a fiery Latina and a sassy black girl to make things complete.” She pointed out. Then we spent the next half hour coming up with more and more ludicrous band names. It was never mentioned in a negative connotation at all. She just accepted it as who I was. Don’t get me wrong, she told Timmy and Teddy and all three of them teased me mercilessly…especially when I dragged them to see Hot Pursuit so I could drool over Sophia Vegara. Not that Teddy could tease me too much…he was right there with me. He and I reached an agreement that day. Since we all knew that Stevie and Bella were totally gonna be together forever, he and I would be each other’s wingman since we seemed to have the same taste.

He and I talked about him acting as my ‘boyfriend’ that next year to give me cover if I wasn’t ready to be out at school. Which was actually something I hadn’t considered to that point. It was a relevant concern. Eighth grade seemed to be the time when everyone started pairing up…if they hadn’t already. Sarah hadn’t…but everyone knew that Sarah Puckerman didn’t actually like people, other than her people, very much so it was just kind of expected and accepted. Me on the other hand, I’d been dealing with the speculation and gossip about which boy I like in the PE and cheerleader locker room for two years. I kidded and joked but never gave any ammunition to their supposition…even as I was checking a few of the girls HARD. Thank goodness that any evidence of my actual wants and desires was pretty undetectable.

There was one girl on my squad that I just loved to watch. Her mother was Nigerian and her dad was from Ghana. They had moved to Lima halfway through sixth grade. I tried not to be a creeper, but in my heart of hearts I knew that Savia Okoro was really the inspiration for me to start the coming out process. Savia was so damn hot. She was only a few inches taller than me, but so far ahead of me on the whole puberty scale. She had lovely milk chocolate skin and pretty brown eyes. Her lips were slim but still full and it was a constant battle for me not to try and bury my face between her plump, round breasts. She had gently rounded hips and I both loved and was incredibly jealous of her ass. And her accent, sometimes just listening to her talk got me all hot and bothered.

Savia was an interesting personality. She was as big a nerd as Sam and Daddy…but she was borderline hyperactive and cheerleading and soccer helped her to be able to maintain her calm during classes. I knew her pretty well because we were in a lot of the same classes, but we were barely more than cordial. Truthfully, I had never trusted myself enough to get close to her, though I absolutely loved it when Coach would have me help to correct her poses or feats. We’d even gotten paired for a project in our science class and she’d had to come over and work on it at my house. I have never ‘taken care of business’ so many times in one night in my life I knew that until I was ready to be my truest self with everyone I couldn’t even think about being in a relationship. Besides, I had read that African cultures were pretty homophobic so I was pretty sure that there was little to no chance that she would like me anyway.

But it didn’t stop me from dreaming. And damn did I spend a lot of that summer dreaming about her. It didn’t help that Moms D and Hell Bent had invited her family over for the Fourth of July barbeque. It had been on the invite that anyone who wanted to could bring swimwear and enjoy the pool as part of the festivities. Savia had worn her swimsuit with a long breezy white skirt over it and I swear I got so hot and bothered, someone could have taken my pulse between my legs. The suit was truly adorable, it was a marbled pink suit with a pretty deep, ruffled V-neck and a plunging back that had a bow about where a more athletic suit would have stopped to give the sexy back just a nod at being more modest. With her fuller B cup breasts and that ass you could have both used two hands to grab and bounced a quarter off, it looked amazing on her. We’d both had the same idea, pink suit with a simple white skirt cover up, but my much more modest curves were covered in an one-shoulder ruffle one piece suit that was more of a coral pink and my skirt was shorter. Hey, my legs were like my best feature.

That afternoon was the best. She and I talked a lot. She and Tiffany, Teddy and Timmy got along well. She and Bella surprised each other with how much they liked each other. Both of them had been convinced that the other looked down on her because of the differences between Black and African cultures. But then they started talking hair and next thing we knew they were thick as thieves. I was sure that Stevie was as happy to see that as I was since Bella and her bestie Vivian-Leigh were having some growing pains in their relationship that summer. When we had lunch, somehow she and I ended up going through the line together and our huge group of twelve made room for her, Hope and Narcissa to join us. Of course, Double A&S ended up joining us too. I loved my little brother more than I knew how to put into words…but I hated him a little bit too just because when he buried his face in Savia’s cleavage, not only was it acceptable, everyone thought it was adorable. I did feel a little bad for Teddy and Timmy though, Mara and Maea loved them…but not in a cute way. All three of the Murphys bruised pretty easy. Both Maea and Mara seemed to go out of their way to bruise those two boys as much as they could, as often as they could. Thankfully both Timmy and Teddy and their parents found it hilarious.

The Okoros didn’t leave until after dark and somehow, I ended up promising Savia that I’d try out for soccer for the spring. Which lead to her promising that she would help me revive my skills. I hadn’t played since we moved to Lima. When it was time to join a team that first year, the parents were out of work and there was no money for the sport. Cheerleading had replaced it and I’d never gone back. I saw her around a few other times. She and a few of her friends ended up in the same showing that me and the Murphys went to of Ant-Man and she and I sat together. I swear it was like the stars were aligning to break my heart when she inevitably told me that she straight. But I must have had masochistic tendencies, because ultimately, I decided to just enjoy spending time with her and maybe when the ‘let down’ came, we’d be able to salvage our friendship.

That decision was both bitter and sweet. I did make a new friend. Savia and I had fun when we ran into each other. But the more I got to know her, the more I grew to like her. Even though I knew that it was the worst idea ever, I found myself falling ass over tea-kettle. I was so happy for Stevie when he and Bella straightened everything out between them because I needed one of us to be really, truly happy. Everything was great as long as I remembered my role in her world. I even managed to make it through her birthday party the week before we were scheduled to go on the road with KAMA. Her parents let her have a sleepover. She invited over five girls. Her three closest friends and me and Tiff who’d only grown close to Savia that summer though we all knew each other from school and cheerleading. The night was so great. We played games and watched movies. When we got into our PJs, that was when I almost got into trouble. We were all thirteen year old girls. All of us were in our favorite pajamas. Mine was a black and purple KAMA tank top with black and purple plaid sleep shorts. Nothing major…same thing I took to Tiff’s whenever I slept over there. Savia went last and when she walked out of that bathroom, I finally understood the phrase ‘It was an agony of ecstasy’. Her sleep ware of choice was a light purple nightgown with a drop-waist silhouette, tassel hem and strappy back…her legs, breasts, back and arms were all so pretty and she didn’t wear a bra with her pajamas and, le sigh. I made it through the night. But that one night made me sure that Jesus loved me even if I was gay, because only HE got me through without drooling or otherwise tipping myself out of the closet in a truly humiliating manner.

I needed the ‘follow the band’ road trip in the worse way. It was a blast and a half. There was no conflicting emotions or worry. I just chilled with my brothers and sisters and Moms D and Hell Bent and Bubbie. For two and a half weeks my sexuality wasn’t a thing that I even bothered to think about. I put it so far from my mind that I never even realized that Bubbie and my conversations all had an underlying topics of being true to one’s self and loving who you loved and the unconditional love that she had for all of her ‘bubbelas’. Finally when everyone else was at the gift shop after viewing the Grand Canyon, Bubbie and I had elected to bring three very sleepy toddlers back to the RV, Bubbie finally got the conversation she’d been trying to start all trip. “Anastasia, you know that there is nothing you could be or do that would make your parents and I love you any less right?”

Boy was it weird to hear my real name come out of any one but a teacher’s mouth on the first day of school. “I know.” I assured her.

“Then why?”

“Haven’t I told the adults that I think I’m a lesbian?” I finished for her. “How did you find out?”

Bubbie laughed her musical laugh. “I’ll answer your first question with one of my own…do you think or do you know?”

I sighed. “I know.” I admitted

She just nodded. “You know and you’ve at least suspected for as long as I’ve known you. As for how I found out, Stacey, I’ve known since you were ten. You didn’t start being careful about who your eyes followed…who you watched just a little too hard…until you hit middle school and realized that others might make realize and make fun of you. Me, Danica and Benton all know for sure and we know the name of your current crush too. You may have thought you were being subtle, but darling, I’ve not heard so many eloquent descriptions of milk chocolate skin and dark chocolate eyes in my life.” She teased.

“Oh.” I muttered. She just chuckled. “I know she’s straight…she’s just so hot. Still, I’m not going to let it go beyond friendship.”

“I’m not so sure that she is straight…but I do agree that until you’re ready to be who you are and have fully accepted it, you don’t need to try for more than friendship.” She conveyed her wisdom to me. When I asked what she meant about Savia not being straight, Bubbie smiled gently. “It sounds like she’s been going out of her way to get to know you this summer. Stevie told me about how she’s been running into you whenever you’re out and about and it was something you mentioned in her presence. He didn’t betray your confidence. He put it to me as Savia having a crush on you. Sarah did the same when she told me about the tiny purple nightgown.” Bubbie’s grin was wicked. “Gotta respect the girl for seeing how lovely a young lady you’ve grown into.” Her pride was easy to see and as prevalent as ever.

Sometimes I got the feeling that if one of us turned out to be the biggest serial killer since Ted Bundy, Bubbie would be proud of us for being the best killer ever. “Do Mom and Daddy know?”

She shrugged and yet nodded at the same time. Not sure how that wasn’t supposed to be confusing. “Gabby suspects, Sander is in father’s denial. Not that you’re gay, but that you have any sexual feelings at all. Though given his worries about boys, he may be relieved to find out that you prefer the company of ladies.”

That was a definite possibility. Daddy had always said that he hated the thought of me bringing home all the frogs I’d swear were really princes before I found my one, actual prince. He really might prefer I bring home a princess. Bubbie asked me why I was so sure that all I could have with Savia was friendship. “Because, even though they are both employed in STEAM fields, they are still fairly traditional Africans immigrants. Everything I’ve read online about African attitudes on homosexuality all say that it’s pretty much considered an unforgivable sin over there.” She nodded understandingly. “So, with that said, let’s just say that, by some miracle, Savia is both gay and into me. First option would be to just become and stay friends for the next five years until we go off to college, hopefully together and we can at least be out on campus, which still becomes problematic on holidays and summer breaks and who knows if they would even accept us after college. As I see it, the best-case scenario, we’d date while either pretending to just be friends, hiding our relationship from all of her relatives while being normal around mine. as much as that is the best case…it wouldn’t work long term either, because no matter what, she’d have to at least fake a relationship with a guy. We could probably work that out for a while, but either the guy would want more, or try for more…or I’d eventually get really, crazy jealous. Eventually I’d end up throwing a massive, explosive tantrum that would ruin everything.”

“Given it some thought?”

I shrugged. “Just a little bit.” We had to laugh at that. I felt a lot better about telling the rest of the family, but I did want to tell anyone else until I’d actually told Mom and Daddy.

And yet, I still put it off for almost a full week after we got home. I had reasons. Sunday was Sarah’s birthday party and I didn’t want to disrupt that or take any attention off of her. Tuesday we were really busy. Moms D got me to help her get all the school supplies for me, Stevie, Jake and Sarah while they were at Cheerio and Titan camp. It wasn’t hard, all the personal taste stuff, like our bookbags and organizers, had been purchased on the road trip. I knew the others well enough to get their preferred pencils, pens and everything. Wednesday…okay, so I didn’t really remember what excuse I’d come up with for avoiding that necessary conversation on Wednesday. We saw Tessa and Joe off and everything, but there was still plenty of time after that. I might have tried to put it off again Thursday, but Stevie was taking Bella out for a very important ‘date’ and Mom and Daddy were going to use that night to go on a date themselves.

So, Thursday night, after Sloane was in his bed, instead of following Stevie up to watch TV or whatever, I asked Momma and Daddy if we could talk. All my life, I’d hated the thought of disappointing anybody, but especially not my parents. Despite everything Bubbie and Sarah and Stevie and Tiffany and Teddy and Timmy all said, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that what I was about to tell them would make them disappointed in me. So, I hedged. “Mom, Daddy, I…uh…I think I might be a little bit gay.”

They exchanged a weird look. “Umm…what does a little bit gay mean?” Daddy sounded so confused.

“Okay, I think I’m gay.” I was much firmer.

Mom nodded. “Okay, well, if you think that you are a lesbian, you need to ask yourself, and you don’t have to tell us, just to make yourself sure, ask yourself when you’re alone and paddling the pink canoe,” Mom’s terminology for masturbation was totally ridiculous. “Who is it you think about?”

I blushed to beat the band. “Yeah, Okay…I’m totally and completely homosexual.” I finally just stated bluntly, if scientifically.

I waited for their reaction and was shocked as hell when Daddy jumped up and shouted. “Hallelujah, Thine the Glory!”

“What the hell, Sander?” Momma had her hand pressed to her chest as if trying to force her heart to stop racing.

Daddy’s shrug was completely unconcerned. “Look, I know it ain’t right. But I’ve gotta admit that I think dealing with the girls she’s gonna bring home, without actively wanting to kill them, is gonna be a hell of a lot easier than any boys would have been.”

“So, y’all are okay with…”

“Darlin’, you’re our daughter. There is nothing you could do. No one that you could be who we wouldn’t love.” Daddy said coming to give me a hug.

Momma was crying though. “I love you, Anastasia Marie. I always have. I always will. But it kind of hurts a little bit that you seem to be so scared to share your truth with us. What have we ever done to make you think that you couldn’t come to us?”

That made me cry. “Nothin’ Momma. But I…I’d hate to think that you were ever disappointed in me.”

Daddy didn’t release me, instead pulling Momma into the hug with us. “There ain’t nothing disappointing about you liking girls…Unless, you’re not planning to go like full on butch. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that and it, of itself, wouldn’t be disappointing, but I’d hate to see you cut off all your pretty hair.”

I laughed. “Momma, I don’t even like butch chicks. Not that there is anything wrong with them…just…I like pretty dresses and pretty girls in pretty dresses.”

“Well alright then.” Daddy said happily.

That wasn’t the end of the talk. Momma wanted to know more about the journey that I’d undertaken to get to an awareness and acceptance of myself. By the time I went to bed, I still wasn’t sure how things were going to work out with my feelings for Savia. I wasn’t sure how the coming year was going to go. And I’d changed my mind three times on the subject of what I was going to wear on the first day of school. But I was definitely sure that I was a lesbian and I was a well-loved daughter and young lady. That was good enough for me. I was looking forward to a future where the only sure thing was the love of my big, crazy, wonderful family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the wonderful reviews but I owe you all apologies.   
> I shouldn't have gotten all tetchy last week. I like to believe that, while I was feeling some kind of way about barely getting any reviews the last couple of postings, I wouldn't have thrown a b*tch fit about it if I wasn't hosting the world's oldest and least wanted visitor. 
> 
> That isn't to say that I don't really want your input and to know that people are still reading my hard work...I really, really want your input and to know that you guys are still reading.   
> And as long as I know that you're reading, I will keep writing and posting. 
> 
> TTFN,   
> Anni


	24. On This Side of The Law (Johnny Cash) & 100% (Big Pun feat. Tony Sunshine)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Almost to the finish line...A look at Ethan & Erika's summers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her beta reading awesomeness.
> 
> Guest Staring:  
> Debbi Morgan as Juanita Walters  
> Thomas Jefferson Byrd as Morris Walters  
> Gary Leroi Gray II as Alden Morris Walters
> 
> Selenis Leyva as Layla Nayelis Elena Calderon  
> Miguel A. Nunez as Jayden Luis Yadiel Calderon  
> Nat Wolff as Blake Mouschon

On This Side of The Law (Johnny Cash)  
Ethan Harris PoV

Moving to New York had been one of the best decisions that Amanda and I had ever made. Not just for my career, but for Amanda’s, and yet, thankfully, the decision was sound for both Avery and Adam also. The Studio School was an amazing educational opportunity that had no equal in Indianapolis. Adam was not only able to, but actively encouraged, work above grade level. He was allowed to do what interested him and given individualized instruction every day. Adam had finished Pre-K with better than full marks. Every student was given an assessment to see what they’d learned and to make sure that they had met their bench marks. After the assessments were all evaluated, Amanda and I were called in for a meeting with the Pre-K through second grade Dean of Academics at the Studio School. The Dean was an interesting guy who reminded me of Ben Stein’s character from Ferris Bueller’s day off in looks and Tigger from Winnie the Pooh in personality. He was both impressively enthusiastic and tremendously energetic.

“Dr. and Attorney Harris, thank you for making time in your schedules to meet with me today. According to his teacher, young Ethan is a delight to have in class. He shows very clear leadership qualities and an enthusiasm for learning that she wishes more of her students shared.” Dean Stalling said after we were seated.

“Thank you, Ms. Linda is one of Ethan’s favorite people, too.” Amanda said with a tiny grin. The grin wasn’t because it was untrue, but instead because it was an epic understatement. Even though Ms. Linda Kemp was an older woman, I estimated her age to place her somewhere between Fur and Bani…he hated his nickname, but I’d been calling Christophe, Fur, since I was seven years old. I still found it funny.

Dean Stalling was amused as well, then we got down to business. “I’ll try not to keep you long. You two should be very proud of your son. He tested above the hundred percentiles in almost every area. Usually for his age, that would mean that he knew all his numbers, letters, colors, shapes and common body parts. However, as I’m sure you know…young Ethan not only knows all of those five areas that we look for at the end of Pre-K, he can count to a hundred correctly nine out of ten times. He has mastered single and two-digit addition and subtraction. Even more he already knows his multiplication tables up to the threes. This speaks to an ‘old school’ foundation, as the case may be…but one that is beyond even what our more advanced first graders achieved in their year-end assessments.” Damn, I was pretty sure that I didn’t learn my times tables until third grade. Nikki was one hell of a good influence on my kid. “His math skills are exemplary…but they are exceeded by his reading skills. Despite having just completed Pre-K, he already knows all of Dolche’s pre-primer words, the primer list, the high frequency nouns and has mastered phonics to the point that he is reading at a level congruent with what we expect of a third grader.”

Neither my beautiful wife or I knew what to say to that. Adam had gone to a good pre-school, but he’d also benefited from hours of being read to by Amanda and myself and any number of relatives. I knew that one of Benzie’s favorite things to do since he made his first sound was to teach him how to sound out words both in English and some French. But still there must have been some quirk or something in his genetic code, because while both Amanda and I were intelligent, neither of us had been reading at such an advanced rate at four. Finally, I couldn’t help the joke that slipped out. “I blame Sesame Street.”

Thankfully, Dean Stalling had a sense of humor. “Yes, well then, we need to loop it through our Pre-K classes every day.” He returned. We all shared a small laugh before getting serious once again. “I asked you here today because I wanted to speak with you about the possibility of having young Ethan take classes that are on level with his abilities rather than just staying with his age group. I see here that Nikolette Shirling-Puckerman is listed on his record as a cousin. So, you’re probably already familiar with how this would work.”

I voiced an affirmative response to his statement. “Victory goes to math class with the eighth graders…but her grade is already changing classes and she’s got her two best friends Present and Aurelius walking with her. Adam’s not changing classes for another few years. So, how would that part look?”

I respected that he didn’t even blink at my special nicknames for my great-niece and her besties. “Well, first let me remind you, we have three strata of classes in each grade level. There are the traditional on-level classes. The next step up the ladder is the advanced classes. Those are for the students who are reading or doing mathematics a semester or two, maybe even three, ahead of their classmates. Then we have the accelerate classes. Those students are the ones who are leaps and bounds ahead of the others in their grade level. That being said, ideally, we would like to have Ethan attend math classes with one of our ‘advanced’ second grader classes. A teacher’s aide would pick him up from his kindergarten classroom and walk him to the math class at the appropriate time. The same aide would then either return him to his class until it was time for an ‘accelerated’ level second grade English-slash-Language Arts class or he’d go immediately from math to ELA then back to his kindergarten class for the remainder of the day.” The Dean explained with almost too much enthusiasm.

Beloved and I exchanged a speaking glance. “Can I ask why that rather complex dance? Wouldn’t skipping him forward a grade or two be a simpler option?” She asked him thoughtfully. I knew that she’d skipped grade in elementary school, though I was almost positive that it was third. Danica had gotten our father to have me tested out of Kindergarten. Apparently, she worried that a smart ass little boy with a big mouth and weird sense of humor might not do so well in a grade where learning social skills was a large part of the curriculum.

“Perhaps it would be simpler and easier in the short term. But the truth is that it would do a disservice to young Ethan in the long run. If we ‘skipped’ him forward to second grade, which is where he would most likely be placed, he would be not only two years younger, but significantly smaller and less socialized than his new classmates. We’ve found that when determining the long-term costs versus benefits for children, it is better to hold off on accelerating them through grades until at least second or third grade. By then they usually have the needed socialization and common knowledge base to bypass a grade, or even two, without so many of the anticipated negative experiences associated there with.”

“Would it be possible for Ethan and I…Senior not Junior…” she smiled charmingly. “To have a few days to do some research of our own, talk things through and shoot you an email with our answer.”

“Of course, as an educator yourself and an attorney, I’m sure that you’ll want to do your ‘due diligence’,” not bad Ben Stein, not bad, “before you make a decision. I will need your decision by the end of post planning. We try and hammer out the more complicated schedules before the vacation.” He made sure that we had all his contact information, gave us a print out of a study that looked at the effects of being ‘skipped’ forward more than one grade in early elementary and escorted us out.

“I don’t have to be back on campus for another two hours. Want to have lunch and talk this through?” Amanda suggested. I didn’t have any appointments for the early afternoon either, and my Beloved was looking amazing in a royal blue and black color blocked sheath dress that I knew she’d cover with a blazer before her next class. I was treated to the full effect of her gorgeous curves, long legs and sexy as hell black high heels.

We talked it over for about two seconds. The merits outweighed the risks and the usual concerns were mitigated by the staggered manner they had developed for our son’s acceleration. Really, we both knew that leaving him stuck in a class where he ended up bored was a dangerous prospect. He could turn off and stop trying or become disruptive and combative…neither would be a positive outcome. The only thing we worried about was that the back and forth might create an even more marked difference between Adam and the other children his own age. But, as Mae Jones had told me since I was a very young man, ‘there was no need to borrow trouble’. Children had a great capacity for cruelty, yes, but they were also amazingly adaptable. There was no further discussion once we reached our decision, and yet we still decided to sleep on it and email Dean Stalling the next afternoon.

Adam wasn’t the only one in our nuclear family benefiting from the move. Beloved had been a tenured professor in Indiana, but she’d made under a hundred thousand a year. While she’d lost tenure with our move, her employment contract stipulated that she only had to wait two full school years to get that back and she made more than twice what she’d earned before. She was half way through the wait period and when she had tenure again, she’d earn even more money. But even more importantly, she was really enjoying teaching again. She was teaching business, economics and finance majors exclusively, so she wasn’t dealing with idiots who couldn’t handle her work load and expected special treatment because their father was someone influential. Okay, so she had a couple of those, but it was greatly reduced which made her exponentially happier. Her research project was almost complete and she and the team of researchers she was working with were very excited about their findings. Several members of the research team had even become her friends. Separately from the research she was doing with the team, she was also working on a book outlining Obama’s recovery strategy and why parts of it would have worked. The book even examines the prospected outcome of the full plan versus the watered-down version that had eventually made it through congress. I was lucky enough that I was her initial editor. It was a fascinating read.

Over the course of the summer, after meeting Xena Garrison and talking with her and her partners, she had her next study in mind. In exchange for her looking over their business plan and helping them to tweak it for a greater chance at a successful venture, they were going to allow her to study the business itself to see if there was a manner in which such an age-old venture could be truly successful in the modern era. My Beloved even wanted my help to examine the laws in place and how they could be expanded to make ventures such as theirs less open to abuses and exploitation. Honestly, I hadn’t seen Beloved so excited about her work in years.

She’d joined the North Manhattan Alumnae chapter of her sorority and was very much happy with the charitable work they did. The fact that Dr. Betty Shabazz had been a charter member of that particular chapter had elevated it above the other chapters that met in the greater Manhattan area. I always wondered how Arielle would have felt about my oh so light skinned Beloved, if she’d known that Walters women who went to college all pledged Delta Sigma Theta and my wife was no different. To be honest, the fact that she and Bani had been sorors had been a point in Amanda Walters-Harris’s favor all those years ago. I knew that both my wife and my sister were planning on talking Mercedes into pledging the Columbia Chapter that year. Danica and Amanda were both hopeful that since no album was planned for that school year, she’d have time, even if traditionally, she’d have pledged the year before.

I suppose the move had been good for Avery as well, though she was too little to really know a difference. In Indianapolis, we’d been hours from the closest relatives and saw our family once a year. Living in Harlem, our little angel saw them at least once every other week. The Noble Elder, ND and Bravery visited from Jersey at least once a month and we took her and Adam down to see the two Hellions every couple of months. Avery was well loved, well cared for and she was being exposed to a variety of cultures, religions, attitudes and people every day. Benzie was teaching her French, El Diabla was teaching her Spanish and Victory and Sweetie-Pie…my name for Brittany…were already talking about complex mathematical theories and theorems with her as if she understood them. Then again, if she was as smart as her big brother, maybe she already was understanding them. The coming school year would see her going to the Studio School with her big brother and her older cousin for half a day every day. Granted, it was a pre-school program, but it was an education based pre-school program and we were all looking forward to Avery starting it.

There were no words for how my career had improved since we’d moved. In Indianapolis, my own yearly income before the move had been pretty close to what Amanda was currently making. My work with KAMA paid me twice that, and, by the summer of their Aesthetic Enjoyment Tour, they were no longer my only clients. In addition to Benz, Seuss and Flood, I also represented Carey Hart, Todrick Hall, Jessie St. James and Cooper Anderson. Additionally, I’d made quite a mint on the Hummel-Zizes personal injury law suit and the settlement of the TMZ case had netted me quite a significant chunk of change. That didn’t even mention the other bonuses that KAMA had laid on me as part of their team. I was shocked to find that even with all the expenses of the move and the higher cost of living in New York, Amanda and I were already in a place where we could look into buying our own home once again. That conversation took a lot longer than the one we’d had about allowing Adam to take separate classes as needed to help his cognitive development and prevent intellectual boredom.

“We’re in a particularly good situation. I mean, yeah, we’re in an amazing situation financially. But we have choices that are both very, very good ones. We could find a property near Mills and Saul and raise our kids in one of the best public-school districts in the country. Alternatively, we could build in the next phase of this development and have rental income in addition to staying near Mercedes and her guys and Nikki…which allows us to do what we’d hoped when we moved to New York which was to keep EJ and later Avery in the same school all the way through their graduations.” My Beloved laid out efficiently.

I thought about it for a long minute. “Much as I love Saulie Boy and God’s Grace, I’d prefer to build here and let the kids grow up in the Studio School. It might cost less to send them to a public school, but I could not do that drive every day, could you?”

She shivered in disgust at the very thought. “An hour’s drive at the end of a long day is not my idea of a good thing. I know it is smelly and dark and everything, but I like being able to take the train home every evening…if I don’t feel like just walking it.” However, she wasn’t yet convinced. There was talk about, perhaps, buying a condo nearer the kids’ school.

“If we do that, we’re literally saying that we are never having any more kids.” I pointed out. We joked about how two was the perfect number, but neither of us had made any steps to ensure that we’d only have two children. I knew that I didn’t need or want five children…but one more wouldn’t be a bad thing.

She gave me a quirked eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”

I pulled up the site Mills had shown me in passing one day. It was a realtor’s site that showed NYC listings categorized by neighborhood in a way the national websites just couldn’t manage. “Look, in the Midtown East section, anything more than a three bedroom would be entirely too cost prohibitive. At least anywhere that we’d want to live with the children.” Neither of us wanted to have to spend a full twenty years paying off a mortgage when we had over a million dollar down payment.

After reviewing the available options, Amanda found that I was right. “While I don’t necessarily want another child at the moment, I’m not ready to give up the option of having another baby when Avery is three or four. I wouldn’t want to have more of an age gap than that between them, and I sure as heck couldn’t be within spitting distance from the finish line and have another baby,” she teased alluding to Bani and Dent’s miracle babies.

I shrugged. “It could happen. It seems to run in the family. Think about it, Bani was ten when I was born. That’s more than half way done…she just got even closer.”

Beloved laughed. “I’m glad I’m not genetically a Harris or a Jenkins, or whatever part of your gene pool your family’s overabundance of fertility comes from.” She joked. “I’d prefer to build in the next phase of this neighborhood. I think that it will allow us more flexibility in design and it will definitely give us added income. Neil Mayzur said that his property was fully rented three days after Mills listed it and it is bringing in three and a half times his actual mortgage. He subdivided differently, his building is divided into four, one level, two bedroom apartments and two, two level, three bedroom units…so, we’d make less income…but we should still make enough that other people are paying for us to own our home.” 

We took some time and thought things through. One thought popped into my mind and solved the one remaining possible ‘issue’ for me. “You know, if we move on this fast enough…we can get Kurt to do the interior design for us and not have to fool with it.” That settled it for us. Neither of us enjoyed interior design. My Beloved didn’t watch HGTV or any of those ‘home’ shows. I avoided hammers and measuring tapes like the plague. I was serious. Someone gave Adam a little tool kit for his second birthday…it was accidentally left at Chucky Cheese. Kurt agreed to do the job for a quarter of the cost of the names Trudy in the builder’s office suggested. All he wanted otherwise was permission to use the job for his portfolio for one of his fall FIT classes and Amanda’s and my help setting up his business in the future, after he’d graduated and completed an apprenticeship with a fashion house. We’d decided to meld the blue prints Benz’s crew had used with those of Neil to create our brownstone. Our residence would be the traditional three floors and a completely finished basement. But the other side would be four two bedroom, two bath apartment units. Kurt would use the same layouts, color palettes, fixtures and overall design for those four that had been used for Hudson and Darcy’s apartment below ours. Our half of the building would have the same layout as Benz, Flood and Seuss’s apartment above ground with a basement that housed a playroom for the kids, a workout room for me and Beloved and the mechanics that would work the main elevator and a small private one in our residence. We quite liked the setup of three bedrooms, a home office and laundry room on the second floor with a master suite and nursery on the third. Adam, and eventually Avery, would have large rooms with their own bathrooms. That would give us a guestroom on that level. Once we were sure there were no more little Walters-Harrises on the horizon, we’d move the office to the nursery and have either a second guestroom or a third kid’s room.

After we got those decisions made, Kurt barely seemed to need us at all. He talked to Adam about what he wanted his room to be like. He did some kind of playtime experiment with Avery to figure out her favorite colors. He asked Beloved and I about our color preferences and then ran with it. I was sure that there would be more input needed later in the build process but according to both Kurt and Trudy, we would be able to move in well before the following summer. I met with one of the Rangeman reps and contracted with them to protect my home and family. Lester said that they found new build installation more cost effective, so they were happy. Because of my close association with KAMA, they provided us with panic buttons at a pretty damn good discount, so I was happy. The house would be large enough for our family to grow either in numbers or just in age and provide additional income. It was a great boon that we’d have never even thought of in Indianapolis.

Of course, my favorite avenue of income was my work as the primary legal representative of KAMA. No matter how many children I had of my own, Benzie would always have a special place in my heart. I loved being able to take care of her. I would have liked to take care of her stalker for her, too. There was a very large part of me that, while I understood the reasons we’d involved the FBI in Benzie’s stalker situation, wished desperately that we’d kept the problem to ourselves and Rangeman. Had we not involved law enforcement, the problem could have been solved with the proper application of a fatal level of violence. In the unlikely event that any of the involved parties were charged, it would have been my pleasure to marshal such a strong defense that they never saw a conviction let alone actually doing time.

Having to wait on an evil person to commit an actionable offense was hard for me. It was part of the reason I’d not gone into criminal prosecutory law. It was especially difficult when I not only knew that he was planning to try to harm someone I cared deeply about. I hated the fact that I was positive that he was capable of even greater evil than most people ever suspected. It was an untenable situation in which to be stuck and it wasn’t one that I was able to do a damn thing about even after I learned even more troubling information about the asshole. I knew that the greatest amount of good would be brought about by allowing the legal system to move against the evil asshole. Yet, even knowing that didn’t stop me from wanting to eviscerate the bastard myself.

It would have surprised many people to find out exactly how wide spread the almost seven hundred Juris Doctorate students I’d attended law school with had become. I had connections in every state except Wyoming and Alaska. When I transitioned to entertainment law, a friend who practiced IP law in California had helped me immeasurably. Later, I’d tapped a guy I knew in Atlanta to run my ideas on the Hudson-slash-Zizes by because he’d made a name for himself in personal injury throughout that region. So, it was fairly easy to use my network of contacts to find lesser known information about Corbin Richardson. And I did find out some interesting things. The man really was a good business man. His corporation, Trade Endeavors was doing very, very well. Much better than Richardson himself. The asshole was a billionaire, but not on the same level of the men he considered his compatriots. He seemed to be trying to be the California answer to the Kochs but in reality, his actual net worth put him more in line with other fashion retail magnates like the Greens or Les Wexner. Of course, he still had more than enough money to replace the tech he was using to stalk Benzie two more times since he’d hit our radar. So yeah, the fact that he had fewer billions than he behaved as if he had was interesting, but not the most useful of knowledge. I also learned that Richardson had property in Dubai and the Maldives in addition to the new property he’d just purchased in Bahrain. That was much more relevant to me. I did not like the fact that he owned homes in three different countries that had no extradition to the US.

But, despite all the careful data mining of one of my former classmates who’d left after our first year of law school…hey, the legal profession was not for everyone. Anyway, Kim was a retail franchising director at Trade Endeavors but despite her overall sense of her boss’ “amazing level of creep and sleaziness”, she hadn’t proven to be the wealth of news that I’d hoped. Ultimately, the most germane information came through an incidental contact. Miranda Hobbs-Brady was Pepper-Ann’s godmother’s best friend. She was also a Harvard educated attorney that I was cultivating to be the Chief Counsel for Amor Verissima when the office opened. If needed, she would also work with me on KAMA’s contract counsel needs. She and I were talking about the release that visitors to the spa would need to sign when they visited the newly purchased luxury hotel that the Dante, he’d been a devil of a baby, had found for Benzie and her boys, when she asked about how a prenup would look for a triad. Then she let slip an interesting tidbit. “A friend of mine is corporate counsel in LA for Trade Endeavors. Her boss, the CEO just asked that she create him an iron clad pre-nup that made divorce too cost prohibitive for his prospective bride. But the thing was that he doesn’t want her name anywhere in the contract…she’s only to be referred to as the bride or the party of the second part. Then when she asked for his girlfriend’s attorney’s contact information for the negotiations, he tried to say it was just in case and to just mock something up to jump off from.”

“That’s unusual.” I said calmly. In point of fact, the only reason Richardson would need that would be if he were marrying Toccara and given that they had only been together for a few months, I found that pretty suspect. I found it even more suspect, since he didn’t want a name in the document at all.

“I know. Carrie is really bothered by it. But she can’t really put her finger on why other than its all hush hush and well, she feels kind of blackmailed into doing it. She slept with one of the guys under her and he found out, so it’s a do it, keep it quiet and keep your job kind of situation.” Miranda explained.

I smirked. “She’s not doing so great on the whole keep it quiet part. Wait, let me guess…you did pre-nups with your old firm and she wanted to pick your brain about tightening the language?”

The redhead in front of me blushed. “Yeah, besides, she knows that those are not my circles for the most part. I’d never tell Isabella or Samantha. They live for gossip and have far too many interactions with people who might know one of the involved parties.”

“Well, don’t worry…I won’t let anyone know that she told.” I said exactly. I was sure not to tell either Rangeman or the Feds where I got the information.

Even without a direct source, the new information along with the bastard’s behavior at the VMAs necessitated the ‘all hands on deck’ meeting that the BAU had called for Labor Day. I was almost certain that they had more information than had been shared with KAMA or their team. I was also sure that Rangeman was holding back info too. Darcy had given me the ‘nothing to see here’ explanation that Lester had given her for why he and Tank were trading out with Sybo and Woody. Supposedly, they were needed back at the Trenton office for their physical evaluation. Haja and I both agreed that it was probably bupkis, after all, Rangeman was run way too efficiently for that. No way every man assigned to the tour detail wasn’t fully evaluated before they’d ever left Trenton. We were proven correct when neither man was actually sent home early. It surprised no one that Tank got hotel rooms at each stop rather than staying on the bus as the other Rangemen often did.

My cohort at KAMA’s adult table had spent the better part of the summer commuting between Manhattan and Trenton after his intimately personal Rangeman received an ‘in the line of duty’ injury. Cal’s recovery was going well, by the time we had to fly out to LA, but I knew that leaving him to the care of others had to have wrecked Haja’s nerves. Still, he had done a masterful job handling the necessitated division of his attention. Despite telecommuting for weeks and then only being in the office once or twice a week for the remaining month, Haja had landed KAMA as a whole, and each of its three main primary members, very lucrative opportunities to shine in the coming year.

My own summer professionally hadn’t been anywhere near as exciting as the personal side of things. Then again…that could have been a good thing. I had a few opportunities to create briefs to bat at Rupert Murdoch, Hannity and Limbaugh. Their assertions that everything they’d said was covered under the First Amendment were almost laughable. One day those idiots, and others like them, would learn that freedom of speech and freedom of the press didn’t protect anyone from the consequences of using those freedoms to lie about or slander others. They’d gotten away with it for so long because there were few lawyers as emotionally invested in their cases as I was. Besides, with the way I was being paid, it harmed my niece and her husbands not all to let me continue to slap those bastards down every chance they gave me. And the talking heads just kept giving me more and more chances. It was quite funny. I was enjoying myself immensely.

I’d had another, unassociated bit of fun when Xena had called to let me know about her good fortune and get my help with handling that paperwork. That had been great, it had gotten me out of the office and given me the chance to take my Beloved and our munchkins to have a beach getaway weekend. I had originally thought of it as a great break for me and Amanda. I’d even called Little Hannah and checked to see if she and her new husband, Hundred, would take Adam and Avery for us. But My Beloved reminded me how much Adam loved the beach. The thought of how happy a beach weekend would make him changed my plans. Taking Avery and Adam with us wasn’t a bad thing though I could have lived without the surprise, to me, arrival of my in-laws in Charleston. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my Beloved’s parents. Juanita and Morris Walters had raised an amazing daughter and her brother wasn’t too bad either, they were just very different people from most of those I knew. They’d worked amazingly hard to make sure that neither of their children fell in with the gangs or hoochies they grew up around. It was admirable the way they had fought through their environs. Despite having had only a high school education and marrying immediately thereafter, they’d stayed together for the past forty-two years, they’d sent two children through college and graduate school, they owned their own home and at different points had worked two to three jobs each to make sure that neither Amanda nor her brother Alden had come out of their education swimming in debt. They were just really kind of Ghetto. I didn’t consider myself a snob, but our experiences were just vastly different and sometimes I didn’t get what they were talking about. Though I did love the fact that Morris always got my sense of humor, which I couldn’t always say about my blood relatives. Not to mention, that weekend they took the kids to their room for a night and me and my Beloved had a marvelous date night…and following morning.

A day or two after we got back to New York from the South Carolinian coast, my next piece of professional excitement showed up. I received notification of a paternity case so lacking in legal merit it was actively laughable. The case was, of course, brought against Mischief. One day I’d decide which I preferred, Flood or Mischief, but until then, I tended to use them interchangeably. The child in question was, supposedly, the product of an affair that he’d had with one of his pool customers before he’d gotten together with Benzie and Seuss. Another girl, this baby was older than Bethany, but not by much. The kid was so blonde, I might have taken the suit more seriously if Seuss had been the named party. Its merits were made even weaker since the mother supposedly admitted, off the record, that she’d been sleeping with Flood when she got pregnant, but she’d also been sleeping with her husband. It was further weakened by the fact that while said husband, soon to add an ex in the front of his current title, was the one bringing the suit, he had never had the child’s DNA tested against his own. It had taken me a grand total of three submitted briefs to get the judge to compel his DNA. It was compared to the little girl and, surprising only Mr. Asshole himself, he was the father. In her statement, the judge pointed out that it had never been a doubt in her mind that the child belonged to her WASP father rather to the Jewish man with two known children both of whom had inherited his rather stereotypical dark brown hair.

Mr. Asshole’s lawyer must not have liked him much either. Any JD just passing the bar could have told the lawyer as soon as he realized that he’d been assigned to a female judge, especially a Black one, with a weak paternity case…the first thing he should have done was to try and get a different judge. Judge Shaw threw the proverbial book at him. He ended up paying alimony, child support, all the court costs and all the lawyer fees, including mine. That was as close as a family court judge could come to punitive damages. And everyone knew it was a fitting punishment. Divorced dude ended up very, very close to broke, because the wife was the one who came from the money in that marriage. Probably, her family had him bound up tight as to what he could get out of the marriage. Proving infidelity beyond a shadow of a doubt would have eradicated whatever document he was bound by. Too bad for him it didn’t work out that way. Best of all the whole thing was resolved without even having to disturb Flood on the tour. I had a report on the occurrence waiting on them for our first meeting when they got back. Labor Day was not going to be a fun barbeque day as it usually was.

The only other ‘case’ I had that summer was intriguing. An aspiring young, though over the age of maturity, motocross hopeful had suffered a catastrophic injury while trying to perform the ‘inverted superman’ seat grab a move first performed by and therefore ‘credited’ to Carey Hart. The nineteen-year-old didn’t have insurance, and neither did his parents. In order to pay his medical bills without having to mortgage the family farm, the family was looking for a deep pocket. While, at first, I could and did sympathize with their hope to avoid destitution…that sympathy died a quick death when I learned that the parents, hadn’t gotten insurance through the Federal Insurance Marketplace, not because it was unaffordable for them…they qualified for the subsidies. No, they’d chosen not to get the insurance that they could have because they felt Obamacare somehow infringed on their rights. As a Black man, I was insulted on the President’s behalf. I took it as my civic duty to make sure that they didn’t win a dime. I was able to ask for summary judgement fairly early in the process and get the case dismissed with prejudice. Basically, after looking over the plaintiff’s claim and the defendant’s answer the judge dismissed the case because it lacked sufficient merit. It could not be brought against my client again.

I was eight, almost nine, months into twenty-fifteen and it had been one of the most interesting years of my entire forty years. My birth family had shed its pit-viper and was stronger than ever before. My immediate family was growing well and happier than I’d realized was possible. Professionally, I was so happy it was almost ridiculous. I could only hope that the rest of the year would be as good as the first two thirds.

100% (Big Pun feat. Tony Sunshine)  
Erika PoV

I left Puerto Rico with dreams of becoming a rock star. I lived in New York for three years wanting to make those dreams come true, but even I could admit, at least to myself, that by my third year in Manhattan, I’d reached a place of complacency…I wasn’t a star. I wasn’t even really in the music scene. And other than going to random auditions and cattle calls at least once a week, I’d had no clue how to even get started making those dreams come true. But I was making a living and I was independent, so I was mostly content. Then everything changed and I went from content to truly happy. I had amazing job, a great new place, I was living my dream. It was awesome. But I knew that things back home were not anywhere near as good for my family back in Bayamon. I knew what I could do to make things better for them. Working for KAMA gave me a very unique opportunity. I earned a very, very good salary with them and had amazing benefits. But during Puck, Cedes and Sam’s school year, I also had a lot of down time. At first, I was sending home a weighty portion of my regular paychecks and just maintaining the lifestyle I was used to…other than living in a much better place.

My parents weren’t ecstatic about how much I didn’t keep for myself. They worried that I was sending too much, so as soon as they’d paid off their mortgage, they stopped me from sending them anymore money. I didn’t like it at first, but after we got a raise on our new twenty-fifteen contracts, I absolutely hated that my parents made me promise that I would keep all of the money I earned from KAMA for myself. They hoped that I would take the money and save up and be able to buy myself a home one day. I hadn’t liked doing it and was trying to figure out how I could help my family without breaking my word when a random conversation with the Dam Bros and Justin gave me away to keep my promise and still help mi familia at the same time.

“Man, Erika, what do you do with yourself during the day?” Damien teased when I admitted that once I’d signed with KAMA I’d set most of my students up with other instructors and tutors.

I shrugged. “At first, I was enjoying the novelty of not having to spend eight to ten hours every day listening to kids butcher my native language or decimate chords. But that only lasted a couple of months. The other day, I watched Maury Povich and actually cared that the dude wasn’t the father.” When I got KAMA to let me give Nikki her guitar lessons, that definitely helped the boredom. But she was just one student, her lessons didn’t take up a whole lot of time.

“Damn, that’s some next level boredom right there.” Adam chuckled. “Please tell me that you haven’t started watching Days of Our Lives or something?”

I shook my head. “No, Dr. Oz.”

“Girl, we’re taking you to the studio with us from now on.” Damien said sounding sterner than I’d ever heard him sound before. “Seriously, Rika, before KAMA, we were making seventy-five bucks an hour, with a session minimum of three hours. Now that we’re considered more desirable, most of our call-ins make twice that.”

Justin looked contemplative. “I don’t do the day gigs these guys do, I usually do clubs in the evenings, Jazz clubs pay the best, but you know me, I just love being in the music…so I’ll go anywhere. Sometimes I don’t make anything…but I’m playing. That’s the most important thing to me.”

Adam gave him the side eye. “If you start coming with us, you can play, get paid and still have your evenings for the honeys.” Then he turned to me. “Look, we’ve all got our side hustles. Dave does his mentoring and classes in underfunded schools. Okay that’s not a hustle so much as a whole ‘pay it forward’, ‘reach back and give the next kid a hand up’ kind of thing, but it fills his time and he’s in a whole different place than us. Xena does her hair and Cosplay modeling. Cass has her shit all the way together. Me and Dame, we work three or four days a week and we pay our mom’s mortgage on the first one. That gives us the second day to get money to put into our little brothers’ pockets and then the rest is gravy. Erika, I know you could do the same thing, easy.”

He wasn’t wrong. The first week I let it be known at Warner that I was available for studio gigs, I got fifteen calls. It seemed to help that I was union. I’d have thought that people would have preferred to go with non-union musicians, but one of the first things Attorney Harris had done when he’d come in was get all of us who weren’t in the American Federation of Musicians union on their role. The best part was that as part of our benefits package, KAMA paid half the annual membership fee for us. Anyway, thanks to Damien and Adam, both Justin and I ended up banking around an extra three grand every week we did studio work. Which, for me, was every week we weren’t on the road. Actually, probably, Justin made more than me because he worked five days while I only did four. My parents did own the townhouse where they had raised me, Sheila and Dorel and were in the process of raising Seb, Kim, Manny, Jani, and Xavier. With their mortgage finally paid all the way off, and two of us girls out the house, Mami and Papa were not as bad off as they could have been.

But, I still wanted to help them as much as I could which was entirely different from what they would allow. That meant I had to be sneaky. Thankfully, I had help. Dorel was able to help me get all the information I needed to take out homeowners insurance in their names on their house. When I got the quotes in, I realized why they had let it lapse after they didn’t need it for their mortgage company any longer. It was expensive at least when one considered their tight budget. I ended up getting them comprehensive coverage with flood insurance for a little over six grand a year. Still though, two weeks’ worth of studio sessions and that bill was paid and my parents and younger siblings were better off. Best of all it was all done without my parents’ knowledge, which meant they couldn’t say no. At all. Dorel even intercepted the hard copy of the policy and put it in Mami and Papa’s lock box where they kept all the important paperwork like birth certificates and social security cards and everything.

As the eldest kid still at home, Dorel was able to help me out a lot. She had a bank account already as she was saving up to get her own place. I was able to give her money and she set up Seb, Kim and Manny with bank accounts of their own. Once the accounts were open, Dorel sent me the routing and account numbers and when I got paid, the four of them each got a hundred bucks. I didn’t know it at the time, but Seb saved up and used that money to apply to all the colleges he could. His grades were on point so he got into several of them. I also sent Dorel money that gave Xavier and Jani, who were too little for us to open accounts for, twenty bucks a week in allowance. Giving my siblings money was not something my parents would ever fuss at me for, so I probably could have let them know about that part before I did it. But Dore and I were have so much fun being sneaky.

I had to get Mami in on the sneaky-good times too though. I wanted to help Sheila and her husband Angel. I’d been too broke to go back for their reception, they’d gotten married at the courthouse, and only been able to send them twenty bucks for a gift at the time. They weren’t horribly bad off. Angel was working at The Condado Plaza with Papa and, despite the speedy wedding, Sheila had not been preggo, well, not at that time, and she worked as a coordinador de oficina for a company right there in Bayamon. With Mami on the case, I was able to find out what kind of clothes she needed for work and once a month I’d send her a few new outfits. She and I were shaped almost exactly alike so shopping for her was easy. I didn’t just send her work clothes though, I sent her pretty dresses that I knew she would love and things that I saw on Amazon that I thought she would like for their apartment. I felt better for all that I’d missed as I’d humped trying to make myself happy.

Besides, even with all I did for my family back home, I never broke my promise to Mami and Papa. I even had some of my studio work money left over every month. Every week, I added that ten to fifteen hundred bucks to the twenty-one hundred I’d been sending the family that, per Mami’s advice I put into a special account to save for a day when I could buy my own place. I had a three year lease, so I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon anyway. Besides, I loved that place. It was perfect for me. I loved being so close to the park. On sunny days I went out and worked on my compositions in the beauty of nature and it was awesome. I knew the neighborhood and had even gotten friendly with a couple of the neighbors in my building. For the first time since I’d moved to New York, I had disposable income. Once my apartment was fully furnished and it felt like a home, I bought the first full price clothes, probably of my entire life. I didn’t go crazy, but I did replace every pair of panties and every bra I had…most of them were at least five years old by that point and it was past time. I also brought a wardrobe of party clothes. I blew a whole week’s worth of studio gig pay on getting myself ready and able to hit the clubs. Best of all I had friends to go with. I’d lived a pretty solitary life trying to keep a roof over my head and food in my mouth with out having to call my parents for help they’d have been hard pressed to give. But in the time since I’d become a part of something major, I’d gotten close with most of my fellow members of KAMA’s crew.

About once a month, I’d help Cassidy with transporting her shit to and from a day gig. Then we’d hit the UG club she was spinning at that evening and she’d spin and I’d dance. That was all those nights were for, dancing. The underground hip-hop clubs were too full of niggas…Black ones, White ones, Hispanic ones…all of them posing and posturing…acting like they were ‘bout shit when Scrubs was too nice a term for them. That wasn’t to say that I didn’t find guys to help a sister get her groove back. The best nights for hooking up were the nights when I went dancing with Simmy and Jax. Few people would believe how often straight dudes ended up getting dragged to one of the ‘gay clubs’ by their other than hetero friends and family members. One of my favorite nights was with a guy I met on a night out with Simmy. The dude was a light Puerto Rican named Jomar. He was nicely tall, had great muscles and a nice long, thick bicho. That night lasted well into the next day and while I may have been going home in the same clothes I’d worn the night before there was no shame in my walk.

I hadn’t been a virgin when I’d moved to New York…but my schedule those first three years meant that I’d damn near regrown my virginity before I’d gotten my big break. But working with KAMA had given me both time and money. Thankfully, I’d never reached the level of horniness needed to make me forget my good sense and do something stupid…like taking one of my adult students or worse one of the married dads of my younger students up on any of the too numerous to count indecent proposals I’d gotten over the years. Though to be honest, in those last couple of months before I answered KAMA’s ad, I was getting more than a little bit tentado - tempted. I may have gotten a little out of hand once I was able to go clubbing and find some ‘good good’ to get me back in the living of life. I’d never caught onto smoking. I thought alcohol tasted like crap…but sex, that was my drug of choice, and like any addict falling off the wagon, I went on a major binge.

I did it smart. I waited until after KAMA was seriously deep into their studying and the album had been fully put to bed. Then I got my freak on. I tried every bit of night life that the city had to offer. I tried every single kind of man I could. Black men, White men, every flavor of Hispanic and Asian…to paraphrase a very gluttonous fictional rat…New York was a veritable smorgasbord. I sampled every bit of it I could. I even experienced a full on Bacchanalian orgy. I registered for it in my real first and last names for two reasons. The first reason was simply that that was the name on my medical record…a truncated version of which I had to submit to prove that I was both on birth control and disease free. The registration was good for any event they held for an entire year, though medical info had to be resubmitted every three months. I’d had so much fun, I knew that I wanted to go back. The second reason for the real name usage was to offer a buffer to hopefully help to keep me from getting caught being naughty. KAMA got enough flak from those Faux News pundits and talking heads. They would totally try and claim that I’d been led into bad behavior by my bosses or corrupted by their loose morals. Those pendejos really hated Mercedes Jones with an almost obsessive passion. Folks had started to notice, and several of their shows were losing advertisers. One would have thought they would shut their mouths but they all had to have caca en sus oídos…because they just kept going after her.

By the time the AE tour hit I’d calmed down quite a bit. It helped that by my calculations, I’d at least made up for the long behind drought I’d suffered through. It also helped that me and Dame had made an agreement to help each other out while we were on the road. Not facing the idea of a smaller three-month drought made it easier to get my reawakened libido back under control. And for us, it made sense. We had become damn near besties. I knew too much about him to do something stupid like catching feelings and he knew me the same way. The knowledge that we had an established fall back plan made it easy for both of us to just relax and look forward to the coming tour. When the summer hit and it was time to go on the tour, I donated all my perishables to a food bank and turned everything off at the breaker. Literally, the only thing getting juice in my unit for the three and a half months I was on the road were the security system and smoke and CO2 alarms. The HOA maintenance workers knew where everything was if there was some need for them to go in, so I thought it was a great way to keep the bills down. The place might be a little stuffy and stale when I got home, but I’d deal with that when the time came.

The dress rehearsal-slash-first show at the Hammerstein Ballroom went great. And then we still had two days to say good bye to the city and sleep in our own beds before load in. Cassidy and I met up with Dave for breakfast that Monday morning near the offices in Chelsea where we were doing our load in. Dave had been ridiculously helpful the year before because none of the rest of us knew dick about touring. He’d stepped up to the plate and helped us all out with knowing what to pack, what to expect and just everything. That morning, he was as excited as we were. He had toured with The Cab and some of their tours had been pretty major, but he was still like a nerdy kid on the first day of school. “Man, we’ve got to do something good for KAMA when we all load out. They are providing a lot of stuff that most people don’t for us and they technically don’t have to.” He was smiling back. Neither of us argued, he was right. The bosses were even chipping in on shit we’d have had to buy for ourselves anyway if we were home. Sometimes I thought they were too good to be true, but then I realized that they were doing things that ensured that they weren’t dealing with constant turnover and drama. I could see how that piece of mind had to be priceless given how much shit they were juggling. 

When we got to the garage, the buses were waiting on us there was a quick meeting that was more of a roll call than anything else. As soon as we opened the curtains to our bunks, we saw a gift bundle from Sam, Cedes and Puck. The sleep masks were not something I’d thought of and yet something I used often and the blanket smelled amazing and was soft as hell. I’d taken a bottom bunk, mainly because I wasn’t all that intelligent or aware of my surroundings when I first woke up. It was just safer to take a lower bunk. Cassidy had claimed the one immediately above me with Delilah…KAMA’s tour Hair Artist had grabbed the top bunk of our three high set. Both of the lesser buses were still really nice. We’d coined the term lesser, not because the other buses weren’t cool as hell and tricked out and everything, but because we were positive that making a tour bus work for Artie had to be expensive. Dave and Simeon had a bet going with Bae and JaJa. We all agreed that the bus would be given to Santana when she broke out on her own, Dave and Simmy bet that KAMA would take the cost of the paint job on themselves while Bae and JaJa both thought they would give it as is and Tana, Britts and Artie would have to pay for the logo and color changes themselves. Of course, we all knew the color would be changed to something red. We’d gotten to know the Lima contingent of the crew pretty damn well even if they did have to be on a different bus every tour.

Artie was just a hidden asshole. Don’t get me wrong, he was a great guy, smart, witty, nerd hot. But don’t let his harmless looks fool you, he was every single bit as mean as his novia. Speaking of his Novia, Santana was my broki. She and I made time to janguiar at least once a month and her Abuelo and his girlfriend were so cool. He was old school Boricua and had some seriously awesome stories about San Juan and Bayamon from my grandparents’ heyday. Brittany, though, that nina could make my head spin. Sometimes she was deeper than the ocean and other times more shallow than a puddle. Hell, sometimes she changed between the two, mid-sentence. But she was just so sweet and she cared so deeply about everyone. A mi, plin how hard conversations with her were to follow, I would fight anyone who said a single mean thing about her. Kurt and Blaine popped in and out of the tour, but they were both such lovely people. The love they shared was interesting to me. Usually it seemed as if it weren’t a passionate thing…like their love was cool and strong like titanium. But there were times when they would share a look so hot it was like a smelting pot had popped into existence and that titanium had been melted into a red hot pool of damn. Individually they seemed to be entirely different, but then they would sing together and all I could think was ‘yeah, that’s it…that’s why they work’. Because they complemented each other…supported each other and made each other stronger and better. The bosses, well they were just cool people. I knew that when the tour hit San Juan, I was going to have to introduce them to mi familia. My parents would love them.

But, as much as I loved my bosses, and as much as I loved Santana, my favorite Liman turn out to be that damn Sugar. That chick had no filter. She didn’t have good sense. She was smart as hell and she saw things differently from anyone I’d ever met, even Brittany…but she was so bold and lively and just true to herself that it took a special kind of pendejo to not like her. Okay, that wasn’t true. She and Trina got along about as well as oil and water and Trina was good people. But I, personally, thought that that was a just a case of two people being way too much alike. For real, the only person with more self-confidence…to the point of cockiness…than Sugar was Trina Justice-Vega…at least on the Femmes’ bus. It kept things entertaining. Then again, so did helping Xena out with decorating the brothel and hotel she and her peeps from her life before KAMA were building. When she told me that their place would offer something for everyone, I told her that they should offer yearly memberships that gave their repeat customers a discount on the hourly rate. I’d buy one for sure. I told her as much.

Xee laughed. “Let me talk it through with Blair and Slickback…that might be something special that we’d only offer to very special clients. If so, you’ll have the first one.” One of the best things about the about the Crew KAMA had built was that most of us weren’t judgey bitches. Actually, that wasn’t exactly true. We could all be judgey…we just tended not to judge each other very much.

The first month of the tour was pretty easy. We got our routine down. Get up, work out if it was a light practice day, take some time to answer any direct to us fan-mail. It still seemed so loca to me that I got fan mail. It wasn’t near as much as KAMA, but it was enough to make me happy and feel like by being me, I was helping some little girls not only in Puerto Rico or the Caribbean, but everywhere, who didn’t ascribe to the traditional ‘girl’ instruments, or who just wanted to play an instrument in the first place, to feel as if they could do it…that they could learn to rock out or just learn to be themselves. It made everything before so totally worth it. Usually the afternoons were either spent at the venue practicing and getting ready for the show, unless it was an off day, in which case we all hung out or we took care of business. I wasn’t sure how other musicians ran their shit, but KAMA was never above chilling with their crew. We did some really fun things, too. We hit amusement parks, we hit spas, we hit museums. But every two weeks, we took time to hit the biggest laundromat we could find so we could get our personal gear washed and so that the Wardrobe Matrons, Beverly and Joseph, could take care of our stage gear. It wasn’t a normal routine for most people…but it worked for all of us. I really had to hope that most of those places didn’t have security cameras or anything. If they did those videos would sure as hell have gone viral because we were all there from Puck, Cedes and Sam all the way down to Quina and the other summer additions. At least that was the morning, in the afternoon the building was turned over to the roadies. However, having gotten to know some of them, the videos were probably just as funny. They just wouldn’t have had any star power to them. Still, Adams told me that one of the electrician guys manage to rig the coin machine at the laundromat in Charleston to give out an extra quarter on the dollar every time someone put a twenty in the slot. I wasn’t sure if it was true, but it sounded like a funny, and harmless, prank to me. Maybe even better than Sam and Puck lifting Tina up onto a big ass washing machine because she fell asleep on a folding table, maybe. I was still shocked that she didn’t even wake up until she almost fell off.

Over the longer break we had around Father’s Day, I made the decision to go home for a short visit. The first one since I’d left the island the fall after I’d graduated high school. I was a little bit nervous about it, so I invited Cassidy to go with me. Other than Dame, Cass was my best friend. I didn’t want the drama of taking a guy home with me, especially since I was using the excuse of company to get a hotel room. If I’d have thought things through, I’d have made the arrangements earlier and been able to see my father face to face on Father’s Day rather than just on SKYPE…but then again I’d not been home on Mother’s Day so it was probably better…not showing favoritism to one parent over the other. Cassidy made me agree that she’d handle the flights and I’d book the room. I tried to trade with her. I knew that I would book a room at the Hyatt where my madre worked. Since it was a holiday weekend, even if it wasn’t really celebrated much at home, there just weren’t any good deals to be had. I got lucky that the booking agent who answered the phone noticed that I was still flagged in their system as an employee immediate family member. I had to pay full price for the three nights, but they waived the service charge, so that saved me like eighty-five bucks. I’d checked the prices for airline tickets and figured that we’d end up spending about the same amount. But I still felt so bad that she was paying for anything when I’d invited her. Cass let me fuss, cajole and otherwise try and get her to let me handle things since she was my guest, before she reminded me that KAMA had given each of us two round trip tickets in case we wanted to go somewhere during the tour’s built in breaks. “I just told Hudson, where, when and how long and boom, we were golden.” I had totally forgotten about the one round trip ticket we could each take on our bosses. I was glad that Cassidy had remembered.

As always, when dealing with Hudson, things went smooth as butter. We flew out of Birmingham and into San Juan, in the itinerary with our flight information there had been a car rental reservation for a compact car from Enterprise…Hudson thought of everything. We’d gotten there so early that I’d not even told my parents or sisters what time the flight landed. If they had known, they would have been waiting on me at the airport even at the crack of dawn. Instead, we drove to the hotel and got checked into our high floor room with its two queen beds. We were able to shower off our five hour flight and make ourselves presentable before I drove us to the laughter and love filled home where I grew up. My neighborhood hadn’t changed very much over the last few years. Some of the homes had newer cars in their driveways, others had gotten paint jobs. The Caribbean sun was hell on exterior paints. Looking around as we drove, I knew that Mami must have told the whole neighborhood I was coming for a visit. Because when folks peeked out their windows at the unfamiliar car, they simply waved rather than just peering out suspiciously. Of course, with so many of my neighbors having seen me drive pass, Mami met us at the curb. I was barely able to put the car in park before she had that door opened. “Mi Bebe,” she proclaimed. “Never again will you spend four years without visiting me and your Papa.

“Four, its only been three.” I defended staunchly, though stretching the truth a fair bit in an effort not to be as bad a daughter as I really was.

She shook her head so intensely that her corkscrew curls went flying. “Oh no Oihane…for three years you were working too hard and too long to be able to visit. Your father and I would never fault you for not being able to come home when we weren’t able to afford to bring you home. But this last year…this last year, you’ve been working with KAMA. I bet you that they wouldn’t go over a year without making time to visit with their beloved family.” She chided.

“Sorry Mami.” I apologized. “If I’m not doing anything for work, I’ll be home in December for Christmas. I promise.”

“Good. Good Nena.” She gave me a firm Mami hug, letting me know that I’d been forgiven. “Now, introduce me to your Cassidy, such a beauty.”

I made the introductions. It struck me as rather funny that being biracial, and therefore very light skinned, Cass looked more traditionally Puerto Rican than I did. I didn’t get a chance to share that thought with her before Mami ushered us into the house where all my siblings, along with Sheila’s husband Angel and Dorel’s boyfriend Jorge, were waiting. But, so too, was Papa. As soon as I walked in, I was enveloped in a hug from my father. His hugs had to be the best hugs known to man. They were never just arms around my shoulders or whatever. Every hug was infused with love and care. Even more, when I laughed he laughed. When I cried, he did too. That day my hair got wet and yet there was joy and laughter. I felt safe and protected and a bunch of other things I couldn’t even put into words. But above all, I felt like I was home.

Over the next couple of hours, Cassidy and I were interrogated by Seb and our parents about New York and what he could expect in the fall. Cassidy told him not to bother to buy any winter clothes at home. “I’m from Atlanta, nothing I took with me when I moved was warm enough starting about half way through October.” She told him honestly. I had found the same thing. Thankfully there were thrift stores half of everywhere. I told them that too.

My sisters wanted to know about fashion and shopping and all the cultural events that were available. Manny and Xavi wanted to know about the Mets and the Knicks and the other sports teams I’d never bothered to learn the names of. Mami wanted to know if I had found anyone special. How often I dated. All that jazz. She’d apparently completely adopted Cass too, because my friend was getting the same questions. Mami didn’t seem to find either of our answers satisfactory in the least. My Papa wanted to know about the music scene. I told him all about the Latin Clubs that could be found in the city, even though I rarely went to any of them. Several of my aunts, uncles and cousins showed up about the time we finally managed to answer all of the immediate fam’s questions. Then we answered the same questions from my aunts and uncles. I shouldn’t have been surprised that my parents had planned a ‘prodigal daughter’ parilla slash fiesta, but I was. It was so much fun. It may have been even more fun than my going away party. For my going away party I couldn’t enjoy all aspects of the soiree, but at twenty-two, every part of the party was available to me. One thing that happened at any party on my native island was the involuntary Pina Colada recipe contest. Everyone had their particular recipe and they always made it for parties and forced unwitting attendees to be the judge of the best one. By the same turn, several of the men made their own pitorro, a cane rum that was pretty much Puerto Rico’s answer to moonshine.

In an effort to keep ourselves from spending the rest of the weekend nursing a brew flu, I limited Cassidy and myself to one shot of each of the three different Pitorros and just one small cup of each of the plethora of different pina coladas. I was so glad that Cass wasn’t one of those people who hated pina coladas. That one was a serious friend ship deal maker-slash-breaker for me. There was a local band who played, including the man who’d taught me to play. I took the stage with them for a while on his extra guitar. Cass and I both had a lot of fun. We ate too much, drank too much, danced too much, flirted too much. It was an awesome evening. The party went well into the night. Somehow, when we finally headed back to the hotel, Kimmy and Jani hitched with us. I ended up finding it a good thing the next morning. We went to the pool and chilled out the four of us all morning. When Mami came to work she brought Manny and Xavi with her and the six of us went to the beach and took Cassidy to the touristy shops. Though, we were only able to visit for two days, but by the time we flew out, I was really caught up on my family’s lives and it felt great.

We had flown out of Alabama but met back up with the tour in Mississippi. Our bunks were waiting on us and it was almost as if no time had passed. Though there was some progress made on Xena’s project. She had pretty much finished all the furniture decisions for the hotel venture and had decided on the bedding colors for the levels of rooms. She’d had some come to Jesus moment with Artie and suddenly was making several of the play rooms in the brothel more disability accessible. There were arguments and discussions and even one knockdown, drag out fight over the best kind of condoms, lubes and even toys that should be provided in the brothel. I’d had a few issues with the nature of the business they were planning to open at first, mainly the exploitation aspects. But then conversations with Xena and Hudson about how things went when people came out the foster care system. A lot of kids, if they turned eighteen before they graduated, they were just shit out of luck in a lot of places. So many of those kids never graduated and therefore were completely limited in what they could do for jobs. I didn’t necessarily agree that they what they were planning on doing was actively rescuing those kids, but I did think that it was far less exploitative than the NCAA and how they made boatloads of money off the college student athletes. Besides, they were giving them a chance to do more and make more out of it…it was really up to them to take the opportunity Xena and Blair were trying to give them and make something good happen. Even with the illicit nature of what they’d be doing, it was a better chance than a lot of people ever got. 

I was so happy when the tour moved out of the south. Even with the weather appropriate clothing, it was still hot as hell playing under those lights. It also helped that I found Alessia Cara to be a more interesting person than Victoria Monet. It wasn’t that Monet was good, it was just that her personality didn’t seem to mesh as well with the rest of us. Then there was the shit that went down at the second Texas show…that was just some bullshit. I wanted to beat that man’s ass myself after finding out what had happened. There was definitely one thing I was going to miss about the southern tour dates. Well, one person…our camp follower Blake. Rather effeminate, Blake Mouschon, came across as completely gay. But in all reality, he would better be described as pansexual. Though, even that didn’t truly explain. Blake loved the arts. He lived for them; painting, sketching, acting, music, dance…all of it. Even his sexuality was wrapped up in his love for all things artistic. Blake was a talent fucker. Nothing got his knees week and his bicho harder than someone who was truly talented. If the talented person happened to be attractive, all the better, but Blake was the first to admit that looks did not matter to him as much as a person being gifted in any artistic endeavors.

Blake said that his first KAMA concert had been our Miami show. “I can only say that I’ve done a little bit of everything.” Not sure that was a good thing, he was only twenty-three years old. Usually those people who were that truly jaded tended to be at least a little older. “But nothing made me as high and horny and just enlivened as your concerts. It was better than the night I took a Viagra and an X at the same time.”

A graduate Art history and management student who was off for the summer, Blake had started following the tour that very evening. He made his first KAMA crew conquest in Jax just a few stops later. After playing with him at the New Orleans after party, I knew one thing for sure. He loved to worship those who met his stringent criteria for prospective lovers. He was absolutely amazing with his very pretty little mouth. Watching him blow Dame had been a thing of beauty, but he almost drove me completely loca when he had his head under my skirt. Of Course, as many of the talents of KAMA’s Crew as Blake sampled, the one of us who had the most fun with our little camp follower was without a doubt, Simeon. And, after hearing the details Jax and I finally managed to drag forth from our reticent friend…I kind of regretted that Dame and I didn’t let Blake talk us into going back to his hotel room or taking him back to ours. Simeon swore that Blake had been able to fuck for hours. “I don’t know if he’s into yoga or tantra or what…but our second go, he…man…I didn’t really believe that a dude could even have multiple orgasms.”

Upon hearing that tidbit of information Damien and I agreed that if we ever got the chance to get Blake in our bed, we would so totally take it. it was unfortunate that we didn’t get the chance to see for ourselves exactly how long lasting he was. something told me that just watching Blake take Damien’s bicho would be a vision that I’d dream about for a long ass time. I loved watching two hot men making out or doing a hell of a lot more than that. I hadn’t learned that about myself until the orgy I’d attended. And I’d never thought that I’d even come close to being able to see such a thing in the real world, other than Puck and Sam and I always felt kind of wrong watching them kiss, they were Mercedes’ after all. Still, even though I’d missed the chance to see Dame and Blake together, it didn’t stop me from dreaming about it. 

Thankfully, the rest of the tour was just so much fun there was little time for dwelling on what might have been. It was tiring. It was intense. It was fascinating. It was more than I ever dreamed to even expect. We filmed the video for the Tamir Rice tribute song. We had the huge KAMA familia proposal in Chicago. We had a few days off in the Bosses’ home town. Santana’s grandmother was so like so many of the light skinned Puerto Ricans back home. In her mind, even if she was poor, at least she wasn’t dark like me. She wasn’t too bad with it, but it was easy to see and feel her bigotry. Still, she could cook, so I could fake like I didn’t see her behavior for what it was. Besides, I had an easy out to avoid her. I just went and hung out at Cedes, Sam and Puck’s place with Dame and the crew that was there. And none of her grandkids share her issues, so I still had a pretty good time at that dinner. After we left Ohio, time seemed to fly by. There were two weeks where there was an extra bus in our caravan. As supportive as my parents had been of my following my dream, I knew that neither of them would have been willing to ride around in a glorified RV for two weeks just to ensure some family time. Not only did KAMA’s family do so without complaint, they had a blast and made all of the rest of us remember the first days of the trip before time had made the walls start closing in on us. It was a little sad to see them go, but with that resurrection of our touring appreciation, before I knew it, we were leaving Los Angeles and just days away from the end.

The summer had been so great, that while I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next, I had to admit, I wished there was just a little more time to that amazing time in my life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So truth time.  
> Two and a half weeks ago, I had to say goodbye to one of the pillars of not only my family, but my childhood, my life, and my world. She was represented in the French Lessons series as Mercedes' grandfather's eldest sister, Aunt MJ. I tried to keep her as true to form as humanly possible. She was truly irrepressible, proud, fierce and determined. I hope that she is resting well...she deserves it.
> 
> In the time since then I've not been able to get into a good head space to write. I'm starting to work my way out of it, but I'm going to have to beg your patience. I'm working on the final two chapters, Mercedes, Sam and Puck's points of view. But honestly, I probably won't get it to my beta until around the twenty-third. I hope that I'm wrong, and if it is ready earlier, I'll get it out as soon as I can. 
> 
> So, my readers, value your loved ones while they are here. My grief is somewhat lessened because I'm positive that Aunt MJ knew that I loved her and I knew that she loved me.  
> Value the good teachers that you've had in your life and respect their work. Aunt MJ was a teacher for 33 years.  
> Value your education. Never stop learning.  
> Respect yourself and treat others with respect. If everyone did this, the world would be a much better place.
> 
>  
> 
> Hopefully, you've enjoyed this update.  
> Drop me a line and let me know.  
> TTFN,  
> Anni


	25. Nobody’s Perfect (Jessie J) & Watch Me (Jaden Smith)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer draws to a close   
> Mercedes and Puck wrap up one hell of a summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS to everyone who has taken the time to review any or, in some cases, all of the stories in this series. Your encouragement helps more than you know. Take a moment and let me know what you enjoyed most about the update.
> 
> THANKS to DaughterofDarkness87 for all her beta reading awesomeness.
> 
>  
> 
> Guest Staring:  
> Bob Sagat as Danny Tanner  
> Lori Laughlin as Rebecca Donaldson-Katsopolis

Chapter 24  
Nobody’s Perfect (Jessie J)  
Mercedes PoV

I tried to be a good person. I tried to live a right life. I had my vices, refusing to only love either Noah or Sam was probably chief among them. But I did try to be a DIVA without being a bitch. There were times that I failed to walk that particular line. I was, after all, only human. One sure fire way to flip my bitch switch was racism. I had a bone deep hatred of the N-word and could not stand bigotry of any kind. The other way, which I discovered by accident, was to make me afraid. I didn’t mean ‘scared’ either. I liked a good horror movie or jump scare as much as the next person. But fear, actually being afraid for someone I loved or even myself, fear…that was not an emotion I was comfortable with. The night of the twenty-fifteen VMAs was the first time I truly understood fear. The other times I’d thought that I had been afraid, I’d really just been very, very scared. I’d been scared for others. I’d even been scared for my relationship. But in that moment, when Corbin Richardson popped his happy ass up and talked to me-touched me, I saw every one of his intentions towards me in the smirk on his lips and the glint in his eyes. I was so afraid in that moment that all I could do was, literally, grin and bear it. I couldn’t even manage to say anything. I hid my fear behind a veneer of professional aloofness. I think I managed to come across as polite…barely.

Maybe it had been naïve of me…I knew that Kurt often accused me of relying too literally on God’s protection. That night, for the first time, I wondered if maybe he wasn’t a little bit right. Because even when I’d chatted with Toccara earlier and in the small talk confirmed his presence, I didn’t think that my stalker would show his face. Let alone get all up in my face. After all, he’d made up some international business emergency to avoid the VIP meet and greet after our Staples Center concert. Then again, maybe I’d had to come face to face and endure the touch of that bastard because, as much as I liked Toccara, I was putting my safety above hers. It went against all my Black girl sistahood and female solidarity, but I listened to Ethan and Daniel and Lester, who had all warned me against giving her a heads up about what a psychotic jack ass of a bastard she had become involved with.

When it occurred to me that we were leaving my fellow voluptuous Jones woman in the lurch, I’d approached Rangeman through Lester to try and find out a way to warn her that wouldn’t get the asshat’s attention. Lester had been more serious than I’d ever seen him before. “You can’t. You cannot say anything to anyone associated with Richardson. It would take away every advantage we currently have.” He said bluntly. “Right now, he thinks that he is the one in control. He thinks that he is the chess master and running the game. The idiot that he actually is fully believes that he is several steps ahead. He is cocky and arrogant. Not only will that make him underestimate us, but it will cause him to get bolder. The bolder he gets the easier it will be for him to slip and make mistakes. The more mistakes he makes, the easier it becomes for us to catch him.

Lester had brought in the male family members he had the most direct access to. Uncle Ethan’s response had been two fold, an angry combination of Lester’s pragmatism and his ownfamilial over protectiveness. “Look, as your uncle, I love the wonderful young woman you are and how much you care for others. But I’m just gonna be real as hell with you Benzie. I didn’t spend three weeks arguing and three hundred bucks all to convince my stubborn ass big sister to use a breast pump so I could hold and feed Toccara Jones when she was a baby. I didn’t change her diapers or read to Toccara Jones every night of ever break I had from college. I didn’t spend years considering her the daughter I’d probably never have. I don’t hold her in my heart as dear to me and as beloved by me as Adam or Avery. I care about her as a fellow human being. But ultimately, I don’t give a damn about Toccara Jones and I would trade her health and well being for yours in less than a heartbeat. That’s why, as your uncle, I am telling you here and now, DO NOT say anything to her. As your lawyer, I can tell you honestly that you cannot say anything to her. Legally, you cannot accuse that psychotic asshole of anything without proof and, right now, none of the evidence we have would hold up in court. Doing so would open you up to legal action and there is no way he wouldn’t use his advantage. It would be impossible to keep you safe and sane having to go to a court house and face him every day for who knows how the hell long a trial could take. So no…Mercedes Antoinette Jones, you’re just gonna have to let God and Toccara take care of herself while we and He takes care of you.”

After I’d misread his actions concerning Hannah for all those years, Daniel had decided that I lacked the ability to understand subtlety, so he was just as brutally honest with me as Uncle Ethan had been. “Look ‘Ain’t Got No Mercy’, Let’s just say for a second that Toccara already knows that Old Dude is foul as hell…and really, if she doesn’t know for sure, she damn sure has to at least suspect…what is she going to do if you step to her with this information? The way I see it, she’ll do one of two things. If she confronts him, that certainly puts her further in danger and could put you further in danger. Or she could just dip to the left which would almost undoubtedly put you further in danger and could still, possibly, put her in danger too. Right now, the best-case scenario or both of you is for that muthafucka to either get arrested, tried and convicted or even better yet, he gets hit by a bus driving to work and he can go to hell and see how demons handle stalking.” I could have sworn he finished by saying that it would probably still be kinder than what he wanted to do to the stalking ass coward. But he acted like he hadn’t said anything after the demon comment. 

It made me feel a little bit scuzzy, but I did as they asked. Primarily because I knew that Daniel was right. The best way for both me and Toccara to be safe from Richardson was if he was either behind bars or dead. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to curl up in a corner and freak the hell out as was an appropriate reaction to that particular situation. The VMAs pretty much demanded our attendance at the after parties and even if they didn’t Darcy and Daniel were adamant that they did. So, I needed to get my head back in the game. I had to shake off the fear and all the thoughts about that jackass to get through the night. If the first thing I did once we’d seen the back of Corbin Richardson was wash the hell out of my hands, well who could blame me. It was a good safety measure. I knew there were certain drugs that could be absorbed through the skin. I didn’t put it past him to have tried to slip me something that way. Since the very beginning of the whole music artist journey, I’d found that the best way to get past, to push away thoughts that destroyed my calm, shake my confidence and robbed me of my joy was to focus on those things that gave me back strength and happiness. To get happy enough thoughts to restore my positivity, I didn’t really have to work that hard. That entire summer had been full of them.

I allowed myself to remember all the fun we’d had with the younger siblings, our daughters, parents and Bubbie when they were on the road with us. I couldn’t help but smile as I thought about Sarah’s excitement at having been mentioned in several post Teen Choice Awards best dressed articles. The three of us, she, Tessa and I were lumped together at number three on two different ones and she’d gotten an honorable mention on like six others. Plus she was mentioned in a Huffington Post article about whether it was right to reward kids for good grades when having a good educational foundation should have been reward enough. Thinking of Sarah reminded me that I needed to interrogate Santana for more information about the mysterious lover boy that Stevie and Stacey said had popped up at Sarah’s birthday party. Inquiring minds wanted to know, because both of the twins said that the looks he was giving Sare-Bear were hot like fire. Noah was no help. He just laughed and said that KC and Sarah had known each other from way back. My thoughts of Tana led me to remember the palpable sense of pride that she, Artie and Brittany had when they showed us their Lima home, and just how happy we were for them. I made a mental note to set them up with the landscaper and maintenance company the Moms had taking care of our place, I might pay for them for the first three months as my house warming gift or something.

Another bit of joy reminded me of the happiness that Angel Mom had shared with all of us just a few weeks into the summer. The fact that she’d gotten promoted to Team Leader was a huge feather in her cap. But even more it meant so much to her that her principle trusted her that much even though she hadn’t been teaching as long as some of the other teachers. We were all sure that she would do a great job. She loved being an educator and that love always made a good teacher great.

Of course, thoughts of things back home brought to mind Ms. Pillsbury, she had given me permission to call her Emma, but I just couldn’t. She had been so happy and beautiful on her wedding day. Her dress had been so perfectly her. It had been lovely…the whole wedding had, in fact. But given her extreme attention to detail and Hal’s military and Rangeman developed ability to focus, that wasn’t surprising. Thanks to Hudson, Sam, Noah and I had been able to give her a perfect present for her wedding gift. She and Hal had registered for a lovely set of Lenox Opal Innocence Silver China. Just two weeks before the big day, when we were looking through the registry to find a great gift that would hold some meaning and show her that we were grateful for all she had tried to do for us when we were in high school, Hudson sighed at one point. “Oh, that would make me crazy. And I don’t actually have OCD.”

“What?” Noah asked her with a laugh at the look of pure disgust on her face.

Hudson shivered in disquiet. “People have gotten her all the serve ware for the set, but only two people have gotten her place settings. Meaning that her set is either going to be incomplete forever or she will have to spend quite a bit of money to complete her China cabinet.”

“If it bothers you this much, Huds…Ms. Pillsbury would totally hate it.” Sam said before quietly clicking on and purchasing four of the remaining eight place settings. I added another four settings and a set of crystal vases that the couple had chosen. Noah gave us both side eyes for leaving nothing for him.

“Get her two more sets…twelve is a more complete number than ten and it will give her extras too.” Hudson suggested. That seemed like a good idea to him so he did that and also added the entire Marquis by Waterford, "Rainfall" five piece gift collection that remained on the registry as well.

At the reception Ms. Pillsbury thanked us profusely. I treasured the simple white gold cross bracelet she gave me to thank me for singing at her wedding. I told her that it was totally my pleasure, but she insisted that I take the gift. “Mercedes’ I know that you could buy this for yourself a thousand over, but I also know that you are a truly good person and so you recognize the sentiment of gratitude behind the gift.” She really wasn’t wrong. It meant more to me than many of the more expensive pieces in my jewelry box. Ms. Pillsbury had also introduced me to her new sister-in-law. That was fun and it was a total trip. I’d never before been anybody’s cure. Cheryl Gruber was hilarious. And her baby, Elianna, was as gorgeous as her name. I had to turn away from those thoughts…that way led to baby fever and madness.

My turn away from how much I was looking forward to having children with my two loves took me to my soul sister and her new fiancé. James and Quinn gave Kurt and Blaine all the credit for their meeting and I gave the credit they were due…but I knew in my heart of hearts that James had been the answer to their prayers of my parents and my Aunt Essie and myself. Because he truly saved her. There was a point when I was truly afraid that Quinn would take her own life. Not that she would commit suicide or anything she considered crass…but she’d started down a very self-destructive road. I’d seen that and knew where the road would end. But I had not realized how far down that road she had gone. Whether it was because we were dealing with our own dramas and things or just us being young and dumb, none of us New Directions really had. I regretted that, but I was so glad that we hadn’t had to pay for our failure and that Quinn was now, every bit, as happy as she deserved…as the rest of us were.

A smile crossed my face as I considered our surreptitious engagement gift to Que and James. My mother had been an amazing help in getting the gift certificates purchased. We’d each asked her how she had known from which stores Quinn had planned on getting the furnishings for their home away from home. Momma had been evasive at best and down right shifty at worst. Suffice it to say, none of us had gotten an answer. We didn’t get an answer when we asked her how she knew fairly detailed dollar amounts for each store either. Just an insanely smug look…she literally looked like a cat who caught a canary and knew exactly what to do with it. Despite, the fact that Momma refused to tell us how she knew, we’d been glad that her knowledge enabled us to get Quames all they would need to get what they wanted. That was the thought that ensured that I was smiling hugely as we left the Microsoft Theater to get changed. One of the papz caught the smile and by the time we made it to Ysabel for the Republic Records after party the enterprising photog had posted it online with a poll asking people to pick what they thought had made me smile like that. My favorite of the five choices was ‘if you were going to a hotel with Sam Evans and Puck, you’d have a big ass koolaid smile on your face too’. Of course, there was the expected, ‘you just know she is thinking…Ooooh…the after party has an all you can eat buffet’, comment too, but thankfully that one only had two votes and the comments under it blasted the pollster and the two people who had selected that choice.

Hudson was, as always, amazing. We tended to just tell her were going to an awards show and she made the itineraries happen. We just followed them, often without asking any questions. She had us all set for dinner with our Crew and Team at our hotel. From there it was really easy to head upstairs and change from my gorgeous gown into a cutely sexy, viridian green, Haney Serena sequined romper with a deeply plunging-neck and a pair of Giuseppe Zanotti Betty Shanghai sandals in black with green, ivory and wine floral details. Dee took a moment to unbraid my hair to the nape of my neck and leave the weave flowing and waving down my back. The Ysabel party was…it was fine. As usual there were things we enjoyed and there were things that were, at best, social posturing and could be ignored. I was surprised to find that Tiana, though an Empire artist, was rolling deep with Taylor Swift’s squad. Then again, from what a little birdie had told me about Tiana’s real sexuality…maybe her inclusion in the Tay-Tay squad meant that the skinny blonde had a far more interesting reason for being a serial dater than I’d ever thought. Actually, I was pretty sure that I was just clutching at straws to keep the boredom at bay…but creating amusing mental back stories did keep me entertained for a few minutes.

The evening wasn’t totally boring. I had fun talking to some of the West Coast centered artists that we knew and liked but didn’t actually see very often. Quite a few of them had attended our concert and its after party just a few days prior and they were still gushing about our MJ tribute and the length of the dynamic concert over all. Puck and Nick Jonas decided to have a ‘white boy rap-off’ while Nick’s brother, Joe, spun in the DJ’s booth for Avicii who’d needed a break. And, yes, that was every bit as hilarious as it sounded. I got my dance on with a few people like Jamal and Kevin Valentine, guys who were just cool and chill and I didn’t have to worry about trying to push up on me. Not that Kevin was gay…I just was the exact opposite of his type. Kevin had come with his little sister who had come with my cousin after we’d been there for about half an hour. Daniel popped up with one of his newest client, Andre Harris, and Andre’s high school friend and pop princess Cat Valentine. Cat was, she was an amazing talent with a pretty simple mind. Daniel had discovered that the first thing he’d needed to do was to make sure that Cat reconnected with her friends from high school. Her label had isolated her from their protective influences and, instead allowed her to be surrounded by hangers on and sycophants. Her label approved ‘friends’ did not have her best interests at heart, at all. She though they were really her friends but they were just taking the poor thing for a ride.

I actually liked Cat. She was a very sweet girl. I wished that Brits, Tana, and Artie had come with us rather than going to the Adidas party. We were invited to both, but really only had enough time to attend one or the other, so we’d decided to take the divide and conquer approach. The VMAs had ended at a quarter after eleven, by the time we’d had a late dinner and changed and headed out to the parties, it was almost two. While our team and most of our crew had the chance to enjoy the nightlife as much as they wanted, Sam, Noah and I had to get checked out and on our bus by no later than four. We were due in San Francisco by nine thirty to make the final segment of Tina’s roommate’s father and aunt’s regional morning show. Once we were finished with that, we would join the rest of the tour in Sacramento for a show that evening before heading on to Portland.

Touring and promoting our brand was not easy, but I tried to, and usually, found something truly great about every single day of it. For example, take the day after the VMAs, even though we had to be in the ‘Wake Up San Francisco’ hair and makeup chairs after barely having time to nap…meeting Danny Tanner and Rebecca Katsopolis and all of DJ’s family…really, they were all there…was totally worth it. They were truly kind people and they cared deeply for Tina and Mike, which made them awesome in my book. The interview was, it was nice. Mrs. Katsopolis took the harder, career focused questions, while Mr. Tanner asked the soft ball, school and family related questions. The questions were mostly ones we’d answered a thousand times before, but they worked in a few surprises too. “So, your first headlining tour is just days away from the majority of the dates. In addition to your friends’ proposal at your Chicago show, social media has you three responsible for a record number of engagements at your concerts. How does it make you feel to know that conservative estimates think that there were an average of a hundred and two proposals that happen at each of your arena shows?”

Sam’s answer started with a smile that was simply huge. “Humbling.” He answered for all of us. “I mean, it is wonderful that our fans are feeling the love and wanting to commit to each other, so that is great. But at the same time, it is very humbling that so many of them want us to be a part of such a momentous occasion in their lives.”

Puck and I quickly cosigned the sentiment, with Noah adding, “Yeah, but if things don’t work out…remember, it ain’t our fault. We didn’t do anything but provide a soundtrack for your question popping needs.” I smacked him on the arm for show, of course, he wasn’t wrong. The studio audience found his irreverence and our byplay endearing.

“So, in an effort to assure full disclosure, I’ll remind everyone that my daughter DJ happens to be roommates with one of KAMA’s friends who is currently working as their background singer on the Aesthetic Enjoyment Tour.” Danny said calmly to the camera. Before turning to us with his question. “Now, Tina told DJ about a time when young Mr. Puckerman was trying to woo Ms. Jones, and he compared her to a Nissan car ad.”

Puck turned red as hell. Rebecca pounced all over it. “Are you embarrassed, Puck? I could have sworn you didn’t get embarrassed.”

“Yeah, I’m embarrassed. If you knew how smooth I thought I was being and yet how epically I failed to get Cede to date me with that line, you’d understand why. In my entire life there have only been two chicks I tried to scam on who didn’t give me some play. Mercedes Jones was the first. She wouldn’t have anything to do with me until I stepped to her correct. But back then, I was too stupid to realize that she valued herself in a way I just wasn’t used to chicks our age doing.”

I’d been carefully not looking at Sam. I knew that he knew the story and I knew that he almost died laughing every time he thought of the look he was sure crossed my face in that moment. Sammy-Boy had tried. He’d even almost managed not to laugh, but then Mr. Tanner looked at him. “Sam, you’re extremely red yourself. Are you embarrassed for Puck, too?”

They had to wait for an answer. Sam had tried to keep his reactions to himself. But when he opened his mouth to answer, all that came out were big, loud guffaws. He laughed so hard he fell out of his seat. When he could finally speak, he tried to explain. “Sorry, sorry. Y’all just don’t understand. Mercy, she has this look, and it was our friend Artie that told me that story and he…” more laughter. “Sorry, when he told me about it, he pulled Mercy’s ‘Hell to the No’ face and…I just. It was just…too good. Then Artie, he showed me the look that Puck had on his face when she was completely unimpressed with the game he was running.” More laughter. “Sorry, it was just too good.” Since Sam had done his level best to give accurately convey the hilarity of the impressions Artie had done for him, Mr. Tanner, Mrs. Katsopolis and their audience certainly agreed.

When the three of us, the hosts and studio audience got ourselves together, the interview continued. “As a father, I cannot imagine having DJ spending her summers touring the country, especially after a year like you guys have had all while taking one and two thirds full college course loads. How are you managing to do all that you do at barely twenty-one…and how are your parents not going crazy worrying about you?”

I fielded that one. “Well, as for the first part…we’re blessed to have a great support system. Our parents are always there to lend a shoulder or some perspective…or both. Our friends are all good about telling us when our schedules are adversely affecting our personalities. Our team is wonderful about making the work of our job go as smoothly as possible. We have the support of a great team at Warner. They have made sure that they gave us the best people for our tour. Our PA Hudson is…she is awe inspiringly efficient. Our crew is not only a bunch of very talented individuals, but they’ve made themselves into a Framily that we are proud to let us be a part of.”

“As for our parents…they do worry. But they also pray…like a lot.” Sam said with a grin. “And it probably helps that they have jobs and busy lives to live everyday themselves. Mercy’s parents are both dentists and they have two toddlers still at home. Puck’s stepfather is an architect and a general contractor. Ms. Becah, his mom, she just went back to med school to live her dream. They still have one and a half kid at home. I mean, yeah, Puck’s brother Jake is an emancipated minor, but they still make sure that he has everything that he needs and has parental support. My mom is a teacher and she just got a promotion that gives her a ton more responsibilities. She and dad still have three kids at home. On top of all of that, our parents have started a business together…in addition to the one they started with, like, all the original ND parents. They are so busy that they don’t have time to worry as much as they might if they had less going on themselves. Then again, wine and beer could also have a lot to do with the chill they manage to convey most of the time. But we know they worry about us, so we call them every day and visit when we can. Moms D and Hell Bent, Mercy’s mom and dad, along with Bubbie Ruth, our head stylist and our, well technically Puck’s, grandmother, they brought all our school age siblings and our daughters on the road with us for a couple of weeks. I think that seeing how seriously we take our safety probably helped them to worry less.”

“Okay, I have to say that ‘schedules adversely affecting personalities’ is the nicest euphemism I’ve ever heard for getting cranky when you’re tired. I think my twins’ schedules were adversely affecting their personalities just last night.” Becky chuckled easily. “So, other than your classes starting in a few weeks, what’s next for KAMA?”

I handled that. “Well, we’ve still got sixteen concert dates in the next few months, we’re filming a video in Barbados for our next single and we’ve got a few more singles to release off of Foolish Wisdom. So we’re going to be pretty busy for at least the fall, winter and spring. Oh, and on top of that, a little birdie told me that my mom and favorite aunt on my mom’s side of the family are going to convince me to pledge this year since I did not have any time at all to do so last year.”

The interview was wrapped up soon there after and we spent a little time talking to DJ’s family. In thirty minutes, Jesse Katsopolis seemed to become Noah’s reformed bad boy mentor-slash-idol, all while the rocker turned radio host tried to convince Noah to grow his hair out. As those two were bonding, Joey Gladstone and Sam had a ball trying to outdo each other in an impromptu imitation competition. Tina, Mike, Becky, DJ, and the other Tanner girls and I were their judges and I almost hurt myself I was laughing so hard. We had so much fun getting to know Tike’s new people that we ran a little late getting to Sacramento. Thankfully, it was only an hour and a half on the road, less than that by the time Brock finished ‘making good time’. Sacramento was a great show. The crowd was hype. We did a pretty straight set order, so the show itself ran silky smooth. Chelsea Wolfe was older than most of our other openers. She was as much a singer-songwriter as Alessia and Todrick. Her biggest difference was that there was a far more country meets R&B vibe to her music even if she presented a more gothic aesthetic. She had never been a main stream headliner, but she had been touring for years. She’d recently released her fourth studio album and her time on our tour promoting it was introducing her to a whole new audience. We said goodbye to her after Sacramento, it was rather sad. I wanted nothing but the best for our witchy woman. She was truly talented.

There wasn’t an after party in Sacramento. Instead as soon as we were finished with all the meet and greets and promo recording for area radio stations, we hit the showers and loaded in. The drive to Portland was a long one and because the stay was going to be so short, we were staying at the Jantzen Beach RV Park. According to Hudson, since we were booking an entire bulk of lots, we got their ten percent off Triple-A discounted rate for the eight big ass RVs and the two rigs. Sam, Noah and I spent the first half of the trip building each other’s pleasure up and up and up until all we could do was revel in our orgasms. Sometimes our lovemaking bordered on tantric…at least the pop culture definition thereof. When we’d first gotten started touring, I’d kind of felt a little bad for Hudson. She had to hear all our sounds and we were each really loud in different ways. Then there was the fact that Hudson was asexual, which made it both better and worse somehow. I worried about how it affected our shy PA, but Hudson had made me check out her super effective Bose noise canceling headphones. Two minutes with those bad boys on my head and I fully believed that nothing we could do would bother Huds while she was wearing them.

In the nine hours of travel time, we made serious love and caught some serious Zzs. As soon as we were checked in, Sam had us all in our exercise gear for a quick almost six mile run around the eastern end of Hayden Island, the small island in the Columbia River where the RV park was located. After the run, everyone’s time was their own until we had to head to the venue at one for mic checks, practice, hair and makeup all before dinner and the show. For a change, we were actually able to take complete advantage of that down time. It felt so good to be able to just read for fun. Not reading for an assignment or something to make me a better Christian or person or songwriter…but just a fun, light, guilty pleasure, historical romance novel. It was great.

I wondered briefly how our fans would react if they could see us like we were that morning. There were no rock stars present on that tour bus that morning. Noah was rocking what had, once upon a time, been a navy blue ribbed tank-tee and some sweat pants that may have at one point been black but had faded to a soft and comfy charcoal gray. Sam’s lounging ensemble was at least both significantly newer and color coordinated. His Blue Lantern graphic tee matched his Tennessee Titans workout shorts well. The shorts had been free, a gift from the team when we played Nashville. Both Sam and Noah had been made honorary Tennessee Titans for the night in some weird way. Apparently, their General Manager had been an old friend of Sam’s grandfather. Sam had the entire rainbow of Lantern shirts and just threw on which ever ‘matched’ the shorts or sweatpants he’d thrown on that day. But the most ironic part of our lounging around clothes had to be that I, Ms. Diva Fashionista, had put even less effort than either of the guys into my look. I’d taken all the weave out of my hair and was rocking a weird braided faux hawk, until Dee could get ahold of me again. My clothing was actively borderline ratchet. Two soft sports bras were holding the girls in place and keeping me decent because the HU Bison basketball tank I’d stolen from my father years before was threadbare to say the least. My ribbed PJ leggings were bleach splotched, but so comfortable that I didn’t care. I was the schlubbiest schlub in Schlubtown and I didn’t care. I was completely comfortable. We had the tour bus’s windows open and the cross breeze was just perfect.

We were all in our own little worlds though wrapped around each other. Puck was playing Mario Kart on his DS. He was deep in the Mushroom Kingdom. Sammy-Boy was deeply enthralled in the Black Panther comic book series…deeply. I was pretty sure that a bomb could have gone off next to us and he would have had to leave Wakanda to realize it. Then again, the pot should not call the kettle immersed. The world of Lady Whistledown and the Bridgertons had me enraptured. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have heard the bomb either. Apparently, no one else had really felt like going out for lunch any more than the three of us and Hudson had either because any place that would deliver to the RV park delivered to at least one of our rigs. The four of us had Chinese for lunch. It was delicious. Other than a short chat with our parents, our only interactions came from Sam playfully twirling my hair in his fingers as he read or Puck leaning over to drop a celebratory kiss on one of the two of us as he played his game. We just vegged out and enjoyed some quiet time until it was time to leave for the arena. I wasn’t sure where Hudson, Brock and Jake disappeared to, but somehow we found ourselves alone together for a few hours just sharing space and companionable silence.

We enjoyed our quiet time so much that we’d had to rush to get ourselves presentable. It was only a short hop to the Moda Center, so Hudson had arranged passenger vans so that the only part of our caravan that had to move was the Swag Van, currently manned by our west coast tenants, Jon Scully, Ryan Atwood, Seth Cohen and Summer Roberts, who wasn’t actually our tenant…though she was there as often as she could get away from her classes and her activism. Darcy had handled LA and Sacramento with them, teaching them Tessa and Joe’s well-run system. Originally, Darcy had believed that she would have to stay with us until we went home, but the tenants had stepped up and they were golden without her. She’d actually had Puck, Sam and I spend an hour or two every afternoon before our two Cali shows signing things for the last three shows in that part of the tour. When we got back to the City, she had more stuff for us to sign for the Swag Shacks at the sixteen weekend fall and winter dates. Darcy was a beast when it came to her shit. The Swag Shack sales had doubled the expected take by half way through the summer. When she got her commission from those sales, she was going to lose her shit for real. I couldn’t wait to see her reaction. 

Though I was a true diva, even I didn’t do mic check or practice in stage gear. I had replaced the old Howard tank with a fire engine red, stretch, crossback tank from Juno Active and the bleach splashed leggings with a pair of heather gray, pocketed, capris yoga pants from the same company. Unfortunately, my feet were shod in the shoes that I’d be wearing for the first part of the shoe. I was on my fourth set of the Marc Fisher gladiator sandals. Performing as hard as we did…it wore shoes out. I was jealous of Puck’s simple black and white Adidas and Sam’s cute blue Nikes. Sam hadn’t changed from his lounging clothes, but, like me, Noah had. He just didn’t like showing too much of his true self in public. Noah was for his friends and family…the rest of the world got varying gradations of Puck. He’d changed into some black, Adidas joggers and a black tee shirt with a white hand on the front flicking off the world. Running through the checks wasn’t difficult. Though, mic check had had a few minor hiccups. It had been nothing too major or dramatic. Practice had gone smoothly, but while we’d been going through some of the dance sequences, I’d made a realization.

Sam, Noah and I all had very different, but complementary styles on the stage. Me, I was a full diva. When I got on stage I channeled all the best parts of the songstresses that had inspired me. I was more dynamic than Madame Franklin, but I tried to keep her love of improvisation when singing. I was less dynamic than Frau Turner, but I honored her by allowing a rawness and vulnerability into my songs and into my singing. Like Queen Bey, I infused my dancing with moves that highlighted my curves. I ramped up my own subtle sexiness and showcased the loved I shared with my boos. Sam, he was a whole different story. He loved to hide his less than stellar dancing behind his guitar and used every opportunity to show off how sexy he was with his ax in hand. Yet, the thing most people saw when he performed was his sincerity and sweetness. Noah, however, on stage, he was sex personified. It was like he’d taken Coach Sylvester’s long ago advice from the group competitions Shelby had sponsored our final year of high school and ran with it. Several articles called his sexiness a mixture of Chris Cornell and Jon Bon Jovi with just a hint of Freddie Mercury. I just knew that he made me want to jump him in front of God and everybody most nights we were on stage. Then again, I felt that way about both of my husbands almost all of the time.

Like many contemporary arena tours, we had had several ‘guest stars’ over the course of the tour, Shaggy in Miami was the first. We’d sung ‘Wiggle’ with Jason Derulo in Pittsburgh, ‘Dilemma’ and ‘Country Grammar’ with Nelly in St, Louis, ‘Crazy’ Steven Tyler in Indianapolis and ‘Like a Boy’ and ‘1, 2 Step’ with Ciara and Missy Elliot in Denver. All the guests were arranged by Lyor and Deborah. Several of them, like Shaggy, were surprises. But most we’d talked with and about ahead of time. We actually had guests appear with us on both of our Pacific Northwest stops. For our Portland show, we were joined by MC Large Drink himself, Cherry Poppin’ Daddies’ Steve Perry. He did two different covers with us, CPD’s hit ‘Zoot Suit Riot’ and Ska legend, Derrick Morgan’s ‘Forward March’. Justin’s musical knowledge was both exhaustive and exemplary. It made him invaluable to us. It helped to make us more aware people and better musicians. We’d added the second cover after Noah had raised a valid point. “Didn’t ska come out of Reggae? I know that it was revived in the nineties by a bunch of white folk, but it was like Black music originally, right?”

Justin had shook his head. “Not exactly. I mean, yeah, it was totally Black music…most American music has root in Black culture. But actually, reggae came from SKA in the sixties. Ska started in the fifties and it combined elements of mento and calypso with jazz and R&B. The nineties groups like Cherry Poppin Daddies, the Mighty Mighty Bostones and even No Doubt and others of that set blended ska with punk and some swing music. But the roots are in ska.”

“So what can we do to honor that?” Puck asked him. “Because you know that a lot of our fans are young enough not to know that it wasn’t innovative or whatever when it came out when we were little.”

“Well, one of the men credited with the innovation of the genre was Derrick Morgan and his song ‘Freedom March’ was the epitome of his work.” Justin had chimed back in. So we learned the song. We had to hire and practice with a brass and reed band and a small orchestra to give ourselves the full SKA-Punk sound. It was sorta costly, but it was ultimately worth it. The local reviews the next day were not just glowing they were almost effulgent. We heard about it on a call with the Team after we’d gotten up early and done a bunch of call-in, morning show interviews. Tacoma was something of a rerun of Portland, but we had two guest stars that night. We couldn’t go to what was basically Seattle with me shaped the way I was and we not get Sir-Mix-a-Lot to join us for ‘Baby Got Back’. And it would have been rude for us to go to Sea-Tac and not get Macklemore to join us for a song or two. He brought his friend Ray Dalton with him and Ray and the Dam Bros made the whole place weep with their memorial cover of ‘Stand By Me’. The show went perfectly. Mr. Ray was such a gentleman, kind of Dad-like, really. Which made sense since he was actually older than my father. Ben was kind and cool as always. He surprised us by joining us at the after party. I think he was okay going with us, because we weren’t heavy drinker…we just liked to dance and have fun. So, him chilling with a soda was cool with us. Better than cool, in fact, because it gave me an easy excuse to do the same.

The entire tour moved on to Spokane immediately after the after party. The second Washington state show was the last show of the summer. Sam, Puck and I had come up with a fresh new set list and used the night to showcase Tina, Tana, Xena, Arjun and the Damn Bros. we even had Cassidy with us for the encore…just because we wanted our whole family together for the final set of the main body of the tour. With all the meeting that we had and how many of us started classes the following Tuesday, there was just no way, without bending the laws of time and physics to get us all back to New York in time. So, we were leaving the roadies, minus Adams and Karofsky…who’d had to go home after Phoenix to make the first day of classes at OSU and CSU and any of the Crew who wanted to, to ride back the long way. Everyone else, including us, Bartana, Tike, Hudson, the tenants and Summer, Marceau, and Brantley…the only Team member who was still on the road with us at the last stop…all flew back to Manhattan early Saturday afternoon.

Viola and Patrick had the house all ready and a big, framily dinner waiting for us. Thankfully, Tina and Mike had been smart and dropped a lot of their stuff off at their apartment in Hayward, while we were in California. It took them barely anytime to grab the stuff that they had left in our brownstone before they said their goodbyes and caught a flight back to Lima. They would have a week with their families before they were back in the air…winging their way back to Berkeley and Stanford. They would join us only for the Barbados stop of the fall and winter dates…but they had definitely earned their full salary, their show bonuses and the tour bonus they were scheduled to receive after we met with Warner to finalize the numbers. Marceau was the next to head out. We had been lucky that Emory Med school classes started after their undergrad ones. So we didn’t have to rework the choreography for those last few stops. After she made it down to Atlanta, she would have a whole week before her classes started, but she also had to get moved into her apartment. Ethan had written her a glowing recommendation for her prospective landlords from Sam, Noah and I, and Hudson had helped her with the paperwork to get a nice place that was less than ten minutes from the school.

After those who had no choice in leaving had gone about their business, the rest of us kind of lounged around just reveling in the feeling of being home. It was strange, I’d spent weeks running so fast that at times, I felt like I wasn’t able to catch my breath. But in that moment, I was missing the subtle motion of the bus. At least I was until the door opened to admit, Nikki, EJ and Avery. They ran, or in Lil A’s case toddled over for a hug and a kiss and a cuddle and in that moment, I was home and happy as could be to be there. The summer was over, and fall was around the corner. I wasn’t sure what it would bring, but I was sure that my husbands, my family and my friends…we could face anything that life threw at us as long as we stuck together.

Watch Me (Jaden Smith)  
Puck PoV

Touring was bullshit. I loved that shit, but it was fucking ridiculous. Basically, musicians were asked to run a marathon at sprint speeds every day for the duration of the tour. For us that was a hundred and four straight days of intensity. The thing about being on tour was that, for the most part, we were always on the job. We were either doing press for the tour, or exercising or practicing or performing…it was a lot of fun or it was no fun at all. There weren’t a lot of just regular moments. We made some, especially when Mercedes was the one in charge of our workouts. When we took over those fitness centers and gyms, we may have all been doing different things, but we were all teasing each other and joking until our lack of breath was not from working out. Of course, there was none of that for Sam’s workouts. I managed to hang with him, but, fuck, I preferred to save my endurance and stamina for the bedroom.

It took me until, like the end of June to figure out why Sam was going so hard when he led the workouts. He had figured out a work around for one of my favorite parts of summer. We just didn’t have time to deal with his usual summer ‘hormonal’ moments. A couple hit us. Nobody would admit it, but our other driver Jake and Hudson rode with the fam for two days after we left Pittsburgh and we utilized every vocal preservation trick Shelby could think up. Our first Michigan stop was not our best performance of the tour…though, at least according to several blog posts Darcy sent us, a hell of a lot of the fans thought that Cede’s voice was sexy as hell that night. It totally was; her voice in Auburn Hills made me have a hormonal incident of my own. I guess I shouldn’t have complained about the ‘runs of death’ as Dame-Bro and Gothic Asian called them, Sam had managed to cut his hormonal episodes from three or four a month, like it had been that first summer we were all together, good times. Anyway, he’d managed to keep himself down to just three episodes during the AE tour, well four if I counted LA. But that was mostly ‘yea! we’re in a bed that isn’t moving for more than one night’ than an actual hormonal episode.

No matter how much I groaned about touring, I did love performing for and meeting our fans. I didn’t even mind the press and promo events…some of them were actively fun. As much as I loved clubbin’ and had thought I’d look forward to that particular part of being famous and shit, my least favorite part of the tour was the after party shit. Not only were we already assified tired, but those things were a chance for everybody to press up on the Zilla and get a selfie. I didn’t get too pissed about all the fucking selfies. Hell, I actually liked doing those for appreciative fans. But the hos though. If I were the old me, it would have been awesome. I’d have been swimming in the pussy…but the me that I was at that point in my life, all I could think when those hos kept trying to push up on me, was that they were disrespecting Sam and they were disrespecting Cede and they were disrespecting the relationship the three of us shared. That shit pissed me the fuck off. Those hos needed to stop trying to get a dick that sure as fuck didn’t belong to them.

The only good thing I could say about those ho-ish females that approached me and Sam at those after parties was that they were real about their failures. They didn’t try and claim that their scamming was successful when it wasn’t. They posted that they had tried to scam on me and-slash-or Sam and got shot down. In fact, one chick used the AE Tour’s facebook page, Darcy was a social media beast, by the way. Anyway the chick came up with a game where people got points for getting shot down by any individual member of KAMA. There was a scale from polite ‘no thank you’ type rejections, but the big points came from getting shot down hard. She even set it so that the rejected person got bonus points based on if they got called a name. Ol’ girl was good, she’d created a sliding scale of the names for each of us, too. Mercedes had the biggest point difference, and the highest scoring rejectee. Her scale started at ‘Child Please’ and the highest scoring of her rejections was a dude in Minneapolis who despite being White as hell, got called the N-word by Mercedes Jones. When I saw that, I had to make sure thatg I memorized his profile pic. I didn’t know what he had said or done…but if it was bad enough for my Cede to say that word period, let alone in public….he must have needed his ass kicked into a coma. Sammy-Boy was in total agreement with me on that one. The highest point for one of my rejections went to a broad in Texas that I called a ho. I did remember her and yeah, I called a ‘trick ass ho’ dead to her face, actually. She’d pissed me off because I was nice enough to give her a selfie and she tried for a kiss bomb. She insulted not only my integrity with that move but she full on insulted my sex shark IQ…like I wouldn’t see her thirsty ass trying to be slick. Sam’s people, and for some reason he was the one of us that got hit on almost equally by both guys and chicks, they ran the opposite way. Someone had figured out that Southerners had a unique way of insulting people. His scale started at ‘You ain’t no better than you outta be’ and went all the way up to ‘flicted’ and ‘bless your Heart’.

I might have felt some kind of way about the after parties, but they made us a lot of fucking money…so, I couldn’t really complain. Besides, I loved traveling all around. I loved being able to do shit with Nikolette that it was never even possible for Moms to do with me and Sarah. I loved the fans, especially the serious, screaming and crying ones. Hell, I could even appreciate the fans who were really just into us because we were hot and our star was high. I loved performing for the fans. There was absolutely no high like there was to be found by walking onto a stage and hearing the love and praise and adulation of thousands of people who had paid good money just to see you. Okay, there was one…but sex with Mercedes Jones and Sam Evans was not something that anybody else got to do.

There was no part of the tour that was more fun than the two or so weeks that we pretty much had our whole family on the tour with us. Well, everybody minus the Elder Sibs, Mom, George, Angel Mom and Sand-Man. Sam, Cede and me, we made time to spend with each of the younger sibs. I talked with Stevie about his summer and he told me a lot about the fractures between him, Ethan and Bellatrix and the fourth member of their little clique. “Puck, I think she’s just a bad influence on Bells. Bella’s thinking about just saying fuck it. The worst part is that I’m starting to agree with her.”

I could hear the question inherent in what he was saying. “Basically, you’re saying that because Scarlett O’Hara is a ‘bad influence’ Lady LeStrange should drop her like a bad habit. But the problem with that is that, and I am speaking from personal experience here, every bad influence needs that good influence friend to be there to be the angel on their shoulder or, hell, just to be there when the ‘brilliant’ idea turns into a shit storm of epic proportion.”

Stevie looked thoughtful. “I get what you’re saying. Finn was that for you. I mean, it makes sense and everything. But how do you tell when the ‘bad influence’ is actively bad news? I don’t want Bells to get hurt because of some bone headed idea Vivian-Leigh comes up with.”

I laughed. “Yeah, you’re worried for your girl but let’s keep it real. You’re also still kind of pissed that Scar-O had you thinking that Lady L was a total ho rather than just having ho-ish tendencies. But, like I said, I get worrying for your girl.” I cut him off before he could argue. “Say what you want…but we both know how you feel about Bellatrix Thompson…so, I get how you’re worried about your girl. But, Lil Man, we both know that if Vivian-Leigh goes completely off the rails and there was something that you or Ethan or Bellatrix could have done to stop her or something that you could do to make that shit better, and you aren’t there to do it…that would hurt all of you just as much. That’s the problem with being good people.”

“Have I ever told you I hate it when you use logic effectively? Its weird.” He huffed back at me.

“College man…the good ones don’t try to teach you what to think; they teach you how to think.” I joked.

My conversation with Sarah wasn’t near as deep. She told me and Sam all about her summer so far. How glad she was that she was done being Sue’s bitch-girl…at least until school started back. Sarah told us about Hope and Narcissa, her Junior Cheerios, and how much they’d improved over the course of the summer. She hit us off with how much she was having a blast rolling with the tour, and we started talking about her current obsession, looking at fashion in the different states and regions. “Summer fashion is so different when you’re talking about places where it gets to be a hundred and ten in the shade. Just like winter fashion has to be different in places where they get feet and feet of snow every other week.”

“Why don’t you take pictures of what you deem acceptable fashion when you’re out and about and start a junior fashion blog or something online. I’m sure that between Artie, Lauren and Darcy…they can help you make that happen.” Sam suggested.

I cosigned that easily. “Yeah, and then when it comes time to apply to colleges and shit, you’ll have a serious ‘look at what the fuck I can do’ portfolio or whatever.” When Mercedes agreed that it was a good idea, the two of them started hammering out a solid plan for her to be able to make it work.

Nikki, Beth, the Twins and Sloane were super easy to spend time with. They just wanted to play and get cuddles. Even just eating a meal with them was quality time for them and it made us feel great. nothing was better than getting love from the munchkins that called you family. Stacey had actually had all three of us a little worried when she first got out on the road with us. There was a subtle air of sadness about her that made us all concerned. I took a stab at getting her to open up. Sam tried, Cede tried. I found out a lot about her. I got to know my baby sister even better, so, it was good on that front. But we ever got her to tell us exactly what was wrong. I finally went to her twin and got the skinny on what was going on. It took some work to get the truth from Stevie, then it was just a matter of us trying to remind Stacey that there was nothing she could do to make us, any of us, not love and support her. But Stacey wasn’t the only one who came onto the road in a funk. Jake spent the first couple of days down in the dumps.

He and Chase had let each other off their relationship hook and that sucked for him, but they had done a good job making it happen without hurt or bitterness. So, he was ready to get back in the game by the time we hit the Teen Choice Awards red carpet. I didn’t know for a fact that he and a former Disney starlet turned pop princess had some quality time…I just knew that they disappeared together at one point and came back in together almost an hour later. I also knew that when they came back in, ol’ girl’s lips were hella swole and she was walking like she’d gotten a serious infusion of Vitamin Dee. I wasn’t one to name names, but I could say that the chick was smiling and glowing and happy so I made sure to give little bro a proud pound. Jake must had done something right because not only did Girly fave, follow and friend him on all his social media accounts, but by the end of the night, every member of her squad had too. It was a good thing that Jake was a much better person than I was at his age. Because back in the day, I’d have given a whole new meaning to ‘Hashtag-SquadGoals’. After we got back with the tour and the fam, there were a couple of other times that I had to cover for him with Hell Bent and Moms D…letting them believe that he was on the couch in our bus when in reality he was enjoying the company of some of the native ladies of the various localities. I didn’t even try to lie to Bubbie especially since she was the other person making sure that he had enough condoms and made sure he used them every single time. I wasn’t completely irresponsible about encouraging my little brother to get over his ex by getting a few new girls under him. He and I had a whole system in place to make sure that he was safe and not doing anything potentially harmful or against his will. I was glad that Cede and Sam both understood that I wasn’t trying to recapture my man whore ways or whatever else…I just knew Jake well enough to know that shit was going to go down, so it was best to help him do it right. He hadn’t met his ‘person’ or maybe even ‘people’ yet. When he did found her or them, then he’d settle down. I had my money on move in week at whichever college he finally decided upon. No, really, we had a bet going and the only one in the whole family, including the Michaels extension, that wasn’t in on it was Jakey-Boy himself.

I needed to win the Jake bet since Stevie and his Little Villainess got together way before I had my money on it. And Stevie could say what he wanted to, but Stacey had told me, in secret, about the matching necklaces. Bellatrix and Stevie were a couple for real. I’d paid my debt without saying another word when Sander and Gabby sent out the email about the tween’s dinner date. One thing I tried never to do was to let others know when a secret was shared with me. I never let on that Stacey had told me that SteviTrix was a go. I never said a word when Stevie told me that Stacey was getting ready to come out to the family. That was probably the reason that as we were getting ready to head out from Seattle, Sarah felt safe enough to call me with all her problems.

“KC is back, and he is everywhere I go, Noah.” She’d whined as soon as I said hello.

I just chuckled. “Its your own fault. You know that we are completely irresistible. You kissed him way too early in his formative years…now you’re all he can see.” I teased.

Her answering groan was music to my ears. “I’m getting stalked by a pubescent lothario and you’re blaming me.”

I straightened up quick after that. “Yo, what do you mean he’s stalking you?”

“That was a poor choice of words. Calm your tits. KC is perfectly harmless in every way that isn’t linked to my romantical and erotical well-being.” She said quickly and firmly. “I have plans, Noah Tobias and none of them include finding my one-in-five-billion before I’ve even gotten my driver’s license.”

“Well, sometimes Fate is a bitch. She does things that dick us around at the moment but end up being the most epic thing ever in the long run. KC, he was ambitious when he was eight. He has to be even more so now if he was willing to leave his mom and move in with the Lopezes just to make sure that he has his shit together for college.”

“That was his mom’s idea.” She shot back.

I snorted dismissively. “KC wasn’t a weak ass push over as a kid. If he hadn’t wanted to move, he wouldn’t have. Though, maybe he had more on his mind when he said yes than college. Maybe he was concerned about the more personal aspects of his future.”

“So, what…he came back for me? Yeah, right.” She scoffed. “I’ve known Santana my whole life. Nothing in her family history tells me that KC would move twenty-two almost twenty-three hundred miles away from his family to be with a girl.”

I shrugged. “Her grandmother.” Was all I had to say. Santiago Lopez’s evil ass mother had always been ridiculously proud of the fact that when she met Tana’s grandfather she’d known that he was the man she wanted to marry. She had done some seriously devious shit to make sure that had happened too. Of course, she was proudest of the fact that she had gone to her marriage bed a virgin and her late husband had been the only man she ever slept with. It was something she tried to convince all the girls in her family and those who were just family adjacent to set as the gold standard of behavior.

“Yeah, but I don’t think her husband was as faithful as she was.” Sarah pointed out. When we were little, there had been things, family rumors and secrets, we’d heard when we were at Adalia’s…mainly before people realized that we understood what they were saying when they slipped into Spanish. So, I knew why Sarah was suspicious of that. She’d been little and easily overlooked, probably she heard more than I had.

“Still, KC grew up hearing his Abuela’s stories and Adalia’s ideas on how to be a good man. Maybe he really is at least wanting to see where things will go with you. So, I’ve gotta ask, and I need you to keep it one hundred…do you like Keiman or not?” I asked her.

Her response was half sigh and half groan. “I’ve liked him since we were six years old. He…Noah, he is so strong. He’s stupidly honest. He’s cute and hot and so fucking fine. I just…I’m not ready for a serious relationship…hell, I haven’t even started dating and, I don’t know…checking out what guys are out there…and yet everything inside me tells me that he could be the one.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. I guess, just remember, playing the field is supposed to be what you do to find your one. If you really think you’ve found your person, does it really make any sense at all to fuck that over because your search wasn’t long and hard?” I asked her pointedly. “You’ve seen the people who dissect everything they can find about my sexual history.”

“Yeah, I saw one the other day who swears that your first time was effectively rape and that was the whole reason that you were so promiscuous for the following five years and five thousand MILFs and chickenheads.” She informed me smoothly.

I shook my head. “I don’t consider it rape. I know it was wrong. If some grown ass man touched you or Stacey…I’d fucking kill him…so, yeah I know it was wrong. But it didn’t have that big an effect on me. I was fucking destined to be a sex shark. It was almost certain when Mom and Paul’s DNA combined into a male child. Same thing with Paul’s DNA and Alicia’s…if Jake had been a girl, he might be whole different.”

“Yeah, I think if Jake were a girl, he’d be different.” Sarah shot back snarkily.

“Shut it, you know what I mean. I’m just saying, if you’re naturally a sex shark, fine. I always kind of thought you’d be like Bubbie. But what you have to ask yourself is, would Bubbie be the way she is if Zayde hadn’t died?” We both knew the answer. Our grandparents had been deeply, soulmate level in love with each other. If Zayde hadn’t passed away, they still would have been. Is it possible that they’d swing like the Lopezes? Okay, yeah, that was a possibility…but they’d have still been together, that much we knew for sure.

“Okay…” she drew out. “Do you wish that you’d found Sam and Cede before all of the others?”

“No.” I answered honestly. “Not because any of the other chicks mattered…but because Nikki and Beth do. If I changed any of my past our daughters wouldn’t exist and that would be the worst fucking world I could imagine.”

“You’re giving me mixed messages here No-No.” she groused. “See if he’s the forever guy. But if other shit happens, embrace it? Is that your advice here?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” I returned smiling to myself. “This is some complicated shit. You can’t expect an easy answer. But at the same time, it ain’t fucking rocket science. All I can tell you to do is start by building a real friendship with the guy. See if you like him as a person. No,” I cut her off before she could object. “You know you like the person he used to be. But there is a hell of a lot of difference between an eight year old and a fourteen year old. You guys are from two different cultures and two different religions. Hell, for the last six years, you’ve lived vastly different lives in totally different places. If it turns out that he really is your forever guy then you need to make sure that the foundation is right. That means being friends first and foremost. The rest of that shit can come later, if it comes at all.”

The conversation seemed to help her out. That or she just started talking to Cede about it because I wasn’t giving her what she wanted to hear. I got it, there were things that I just didn’t see from the same perspective that she and Cede and the Moms did. I had a dick. That wasn’t to say it hadn’t hurt like a son of a bitch the first time my baby had turned to Cede rather than me for advice…but I’d eventually gotten over it and was just happy that she had other people she could talk to rather than making dumbass mistakes she didn’t have to make. I kind of wanted her to go ahead and give KC a chance. I liked that kid. He had some good qualities; smart, courteous, ambitious; he got along well with Moms. We knew almost all of his people who lived in the continental US. Plus, he already had a very healthy respect for the hurt I could rain down on his head. That was a big plus. I hadn’t had to give too many shovel speeches since we’d gotten famous. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to give the one I’d given to Ms. Pillsbury’s new husband…it wouldn’t work for the kid. I needed to come up with something for smaller, not militarily trained douchebags who wanted to date one of the girls I loved.

The last show of the main part of the tour went off without a hitch. I, personally, would have preferred to keep the whole group together on the way home. But with so many of us needing to hurry our asses back to get back to classes a few days after that final stop, there was just no way in hell it could be managed. So, some of us flew, and the rest rode back on the buses. We ended up making the most of that final time with Marceau. She was going off to med school and so I’d gotten information from Moms about what kind of gift would be really useful to her. When she left, she had gifts waiting on her to find that Joaquina had slipped into her bag for all of us. One of the gift bag contained three of the eight piece sets of portable Purell bottles that had little loops on them for easy use. We had gotten her a really nice, analog watch which was a necessity for a proper blood pressure check, according to Mom and we made sure it was water resistant too. She already had a KAMA logo duffle bag and sweatshirt, so she ended up getting a subtly logo embossed laptop carrying messenger bag, one of the planners and at least one of each of all the cold weather gear we had on the site. Hey, she was from New Orleans and, technically, it snowed in the ATL.

Not all of those small gifts were from me, Cede and Sam, just the watch and the Purell. Everybody had chipped in and gotten her something they thought she could use. We’d have given her the gifts without the subterfuge, but she made us all promise not to make a big fuss. We had gotten her one big gift as her bosses, KAMA had paid her rent for six months. Hudson had proven invaluable in getting that done for us. I’d wanted to upgrade her to a two bedroom place, but Cede had pointed out that Marceau would end up either having to move at the end of her lease or get a roommate to make up for the cost once we weren’t covering things anymore so I stuck with paying for the one bed one bath, six hundred and eighty square foot unit she’d made the arrangements for before we met her. It turned out to be really good that I didn’t get my way because I found out later that Rainbow had handled another month, her fellow dancers had banded together and paid two months and then the rest of the band and road crew had handled the last two months of the year. I think they may have over paid if she’d had to put down first and last to secure the apartment…but I was also sure that she would definitely appreciate the help. Med school wasn’t cheap and scholarships only covered so much.

Of course, saying goodbye to C-Cubed was harder, but it wasn’t as final. We’d be seeing and talking to them all the time. Not that we didn’t give them their own send off. We’d arranged for them to have a nice weekend at the Fairmont in San Francisco. They just had to make the reservation and they would spend up to seventy-two hours in a Main Building Balcony Suite. We were handling the room and two meals a day…still, I’d have been shocked if when they had a weekend all to themselves in a swanky hotel and they thought about food at all. We’d also paid for their Thanksgiving flights to and from Lima. But that one was more for our benefit. Moms D had decided that we were going to have Christmas in New York that year and stay through the New Year for Daniel and Riker’s wedding. That meant we wouldn’t be home over the Christmas break at all, so Cede wanted to do a HUGE Thanksgiving party at our house. Since Thanksgiving was a shorter break, it was always iffy if C-Cubed would make it home for the holiday. Cede wanted to make sure that they would be home for her party.

After we were just back down to those of us who lived in the building, we were invaded by the midgets and that was awesome. I loved any time with Nik-Nak and EJ and Avery were two of my favorite non-Double A-S toddlers in the whole family. EJ told us all about his summer and how much fun he had when they went to the beach. Avery just gave us all her cute little smiles and climbed all over all of us spreading love and baby scent. We all talked and Ethan and Amanda got Cede and the rest of us caught up on some of the newest family gossip. “So, your uncle is in Vegas tying the knot.”

Cede looked surprised. “I thought that Christophe and Mom had talked Bryant into letting the family be there.”

Amanda laughed. “They thought so to. Daniel and Mellie are both with them and so are Mills, Francesca, and Madeline. That was the compromise that Nadia and Bryant reached between their desire to be scandalous and elope and Dani and Christophe’s desire for them to have at least a small, family and friends only wedding.”

Ethan whipped out his phone and showed us the pictures Bryant had sent him less than an hour before. Nadia had worn a wedding dress…a really sexy one. It was a silky looking material that followed her curves like a religion. The neckline was cut down to just above her navel and so was the back. There was a belt of crystal embellishments around her waist. Those crystals were mirrored in her red soled shoes. Melliscent and Nadia’s girls were all wearing red, body-con, mini dresses. The adults’ dresses had deep V necklines and crisscross backs. And while Mills hadn’t put the word out yet, she was starting to show, and the changes in her body were certainly starting to make themselves very apparent. Mellie’s dress was a little longer, a little less tight and had a one shoulder neckline to make it more age appropriate. Melliscent and the other three ladies were also wearing red bottoms, though theirs were that ‘nude’ neutral color and Mellie’s weren’t as high as the other ladies, but Mills had gone with the shorter shoes as well. Both Bryant and Daniel were in navy suits with white shirts and navy and red stripped ties. Saul, Neil, and Roman looked dapper in gray suits with red ties. Everyone looked really happy. “They are staying at Caeser’s…they got married at the Little Chapel of the Flowers in the Gazebo.” The pictures were beautiful. Bryant and Nadia looked seriously happy.

I said as much to the assembled onlookers. “We’ll get Yazz to help us plan them a surprise reception or something that the whole family can come to, to celebrate. That should keep Moms D and Brother C off their asses about the Vegas thing. And if we pay for it, we don’t have to get them a gift and we’ll guarantee that they will actually come.” 

Cede loved that idea. “Oh, yeah…that will give Nadia the time to help Daniel and Riker plan their wedding and we can start letting Yasmine show us that she really is an all-around event planner. Two birds, one stone.” She chuckled. “So, anything else on the family news front?”

Ethan looked thoughtful. “Daniel’s in-laws have moved in. Amanda and I took them a housewarming gift. They’re teaching at the UN International School and live in a building that is walking distance from it.”

“I think I remember them from Riker’s graduation. Her dad has amazing hair right?” Cede asked trying to remember an impression of a person she met as a child.

“Yup. He’s Native American and her mom is both Native American and Black.” Amanda nodded. “Ethan is thinking that we should do a thing for them. Especially since, if we work quickly enough, we can probable work it to include a going away aspect for Riker and Chris.”

After a little more chitchat. Bubbie broke in. “Thanks to the new mannequins, I’ve got everything ready for the three of you for all your meetings Monday and Tuesday.” She smirked.

“You mean the life model decoys.” Sam joked. He wasn’t entirely wrong though. Bubbie’s new mannequins were custom made to represent Sam, Mercedes and me from the tops of our heads to the soles of our feet. Those bad boys had cost a pretty penny…but they were perfectly us in padded plastic or whatever. They allowed Bubbie and Kurt to be able to take care of their job even when we weren’t actively present.

Bubbie just threw a pillow at his head. “Anyway, I’ll bring them over tomorrow. And Kurt and I will help you with getting ready for at least Monday’s meetings.”

“But Bubbie,” Sam said with a pouty smile. “Can’t we see them tonight? What if we don’t like it?”

“Yeah, because we actually care.” I scoffed.

Bubbie wasn’t even phased by the query. “Then I’ll do what I always do if you or Noah don’t like a particular meeting look or if Mercedes is published in a certain look…quietly donate it to a return to work, dress for success program. A good business look should never go to waste just because the two of you have rather plebian tastes.”

“I love how she made sure to stress that it’s just you and me that have ‘plebian tastes’.” Sam laughed. “Sorry Noah, Mercy’s Bubbie’s favorite now.”

“Well, duh. Cede shops with her…shops with her and never complains. Even Sarah can’t say that. Of course, she’s the favorite.” I returned with a smug laugh. “I’m still the original.”

“Okay, OG…original grandson…are you guys ready for classes Wednesday?” Her answer was a whole hell of a lot of groans. “What? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t speak for everyone else, but I’m feeling like I need a vacation from my vacation.” Sam laughed.

Kurt shook his head. “Its not that for me. My summer was great, and I loved every moment of it. I just…usually back to school means a delightful shopping trip wherein my bestie and I get all kitted out for the coming school year. We even managed to sneak away for some bonding through shopping last year…though KAMA wasn’t as huge as they are now…so it was far more manageable.” He pouted. Santana and Britts were both in complete agreement with his thoughts on the subject.

Cede threw him an apologetic look as Blaine patted his hand. “I’m feeling unprepared. I love school clothes shopping, but what I really am missing is the supply shopping. Going and getting everything we’ll need for the semester…or entire school year. Finding the coolest pens and notebooks…and now Momma and Daddy can’t tell me that the pens I fell in love with are impractical based on either cost or outrageous colors, because A, I’m buying them myself and B, its just for notes so the professors won’t say dick.” My beautiful wife sighed pitifully. It wasn’t helped by Blaine’s cosigning the lack of new school supplies. Never mind that I was pretty sure that they hadn’t used half of the stockpile they’d amassed over the two previous summers.

I voiced that simple truth and got pillow smacked by not only Cede and Blaine, but unexpectantly, or maybe not…Artie. “You’re such a dork.” I told him returning fire. The family room quickly devolved into a massive pillow fight that didn’t end until someone accidentally knocked EJ off the couch he was jumping on. We literally all froze until he popped up.

“I’m okay, Momma. Why did everyone stop playing?”

Amanda laughed. “Because we just realized that it’s past your and your sister’s bed time and almost your cousin’s. All three of you are back in school now and Benz, Sam and Puck have meetings that start really early in the morning.”

No one had ever told me that half of parenting was bullshiting your way through answering why your kid couldn’t do something that that you’d done yourself or that deep inside you knew was going to be fun as hell. Thankfully, he bought it. It was definitely better than the truth that we’d all stopped to see whose ass Amanda was going to kick if he’d been hurt. Unfortunately, that meant the party was over. Nikki asked and was allowed to sleep in her room at our house that night and since there wasn’t actually school the very next day, it wasn’t a big deal. We helped her through her nightly rituals, Sexy Mama brushed and braided down her freshly washed hair and I tucked her in, we all gave her kisses and she and Cede read a chapter of one of those Potter books they loved so much. Sam and I just basked in being home and watching our woman caring for our daughter. It was a heady feeling.

The next morning was probably going to be a sucktacular start to the new school year. The evening meeting wasn’t even something we really had a clue what the end game was going to be. The Warner meeting the morning after was bound to be a pain in the ass. But in that moment, all I could think was no matter what the world threw at us; we were going to be just fine as long as we dealt with the future just as we’d done the previous three years…together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience. I apologize for the delay. Quite honestly, I found it very hard to return to writing after a deeply personal loss.   
> I hope that each of you will read and comment. Let me know how you feel about this last chapter of the summer.   
> I'm taking some time to work on the first chapter of KAMA's junior year. The story will be called Entrez dans L'Avenir. I hope to start posting it sometime in mid to late August.   
> I'm also working on Illy's stories. I hope to have a new chapter of her Glee story 'Big Girls Can Be Sexy Too' within a month.   
> I hope that all my American readers had a happy and safe Memorial Weekend.   
> I am grateful for the service of all our Fallen Soldiers. May they rest in honor and peace.   
> TTFN,  
> Anni


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